


The Early Hiatus: Part III

by Cerdic519



Series: Elementary 366 [10]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle, Supernatural, The Professionals (TV 1977)
Genre: Acting, Affairs, Alibis, Angst, Army, Assassination, Athletes, Bigotry & Prejudice, Boats and Ships, Bullying, Caring, Codes & Ciphers, Competition, Cuddling & Snuggling, Deception, Disguise, Dwarf Character, Egypt, Embarrassment, England (Country), F/M, Family, Fan-fiction, Framing Story, Fraud, Friendship, Gay Sex, Government Conspiracy, Hot, Humor, Illegitimacy, Infidelity, Inheritance, Johnlock - Freeform, Journalism, Justice, London, M/M, Minor Character Death, Mistaken Identity, Murder, Newspapers, Nobility, Nuts, Orkney Islands, Painting, Persecution, Photography, Pining, Politics, Pregnancy, Racism, Religion, Reunions, Sabotage, Scandal, Scotland, Shetland Isles, Slow Burn, Statues, Stress, Surprises, Swimming, Taxidermy, Teasing, Theft, Trains, Trauma, Trophies, Twins, Unrequited Love, Vendettas, Victorian, Wrestling, haggis, spousal abuse, stationery, vengeance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-02
Updated: 2020-02-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:13:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 54,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22526872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerdic519/pseuds/Cerdic519
Summary: The Complete Cases Of Sherlock Holmes And John Watson. All 366 cases plus assorted interludes, hiatuses, codas &c.1885-1886. Even being a thousand miles apart cannot stop the troubles piling up for these two. Watson reaps the whirlwind of a less than advisable decision concerning a forgetful female bed occupant, while for Holmes it is on to questionable statues, unhappy Vikings, painted sheep, dangerous strippers, a much-desired trophy, faked deaths at sea, verbal legerdemain, a shaven swimmer,  a terrifying woman in a kilt and nuts in a field. A gruesome case showing what happens when the justice system fails is followed by extremes of acting, street-fighters and large noses, before the detective encounters one of the most terrifying men that he will meet in his long and illustrious career. Once he has stopped shaking there is another meeting with an old friend, a trained killer, an exploding barn (complete with an unwelcome familial encounter) and a mistaken journalist who really goes too far before Holmes can return to London and a happy reunion with the man he.... values as a friend.Stop shaking your head like that!
Relationships: Lucifer/OMC, Sherlock Holmes & John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Series: Elementary 366 [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555741
Kudos: 28





	1. Contents

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vignahara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vignahara/gifts), [vitabear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vitabear/gifts).



> This series is completely written and will be updated daily until done.  
> All cases in the Early Hiatus are new, but for consistency are still marked ☼.  
> 

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Contents page.

** 1885 **

**Interlude: Perfect?**  
by Miss Clementine St. Leger  
_Sometimes things look just too good to be true_

 **Case 81: The Adventure Of The Beguiling Betrayer ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Holmes finds that Anglo-Egyptian politics can reach the Hebrides_

 **Case 82: The Adventure Of The Tarbertshire Viking ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_The son of a hotel-owner asks for Holmes's help - and gets it_

 **Case 83: The Adventure Of The Haggi ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_The detective rids Argyllshire of a loud, unwelcome presence_

 **Case 84: The Adventure Of The Colourful Stripper ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Holmes helps a boat-owner avoid that sinking feeling_

 **Case 85: The Battle For The Golden Guerdon ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_A diversion as the detective interferes in a local competition_

 **Interlude: Stationery**  
by Mr. Campbell Kerr, Esquire  
_Sir Charles Holmes 'misplaces' an item of stationery_

 **Interlude: All Clear**  
by Mr. Lucifer Garrick, Esquire  
_Benji gets some good news, so Lucifer gets the Banjax!_

 **Case 86: A Case In Blackness ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Holmes puts a stop to one woman's campaign of persecution_

 **Case 87: The Deceiving Of Dollar Bill ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Back to the world of mining and a spelling 'mistake' proves costly_

 **Case 88: The Adventure Of The Shaven Swimmer ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Holmes helps a client with his annoying elder brothers_  


**Case 89: The Adventure Of Flora MacDonald ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Marriage is in the air as Holmes enters the world of tartan_

 **Case 90: Death By Nut ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Cows, nuts and daggers make a very strange case in Forfarshire_

 **Interlude: Rosy**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Things are looking up for Watson – so what is about to go wrong?_

 **Case 91: Rough Justice In The Mearns ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Another case where the justice system fails, with horrible results_

 **Case 92: Macduff Of Macduff As Macduff ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Holmes helps out a modest actor (sic)_

 **Case 93: The Adventure Of The Street-Fighters ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Campbell Kerr requests help for a worried relative_

 **Case 94: The Adventure Of The Findhorn Photographs ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_A landowner finds out that his wife has indeed been unfaithful_

 **Interlude: Birthday Surprise**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_True to form, Watson learns that the worst has happened_

 **Case 95: The Adventure Of The Stuffed Shirt ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_A 'stuffy' case Holmes really wishes he had not got involved in_

 **Case 96: The Adventure Of The Displeased Duke ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Holmes helps an old friend by getting him into a wrestling match_

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** 1886 **

**Interlude: Homeward Bound**  
by Doctor John Watson, M.D.  
_Watson prepares to return to England – and Holmes_

 **Case 97: The Adventure Of The Trained Killer ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Holmes helps the British Army, although not as they expect_

 **Case 98: The Adventure Of The Harray Pottery ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_In distant Orkney someone blows up a potter's barn – but why?_

 **Case 99: A Case In Whiteness ☼**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Holmes allows his brother Randall to dig an even deeper hole_

 **Interlude: Reunited**  
by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire  
_Holmes and Watson have a totally unemotional reunion (cough!)_

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	2. Interlude: Perfect?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. Sometimes things just look too good.

_[Narration by Miss Clementine St. Leger]_

I had returned from Scotland and done rather better on the way back, only getting groped the once (Dumfries, and _his_ wife will be in for quiet few nights after I put the screws on him!). It was good to hear that Sherlock's meeting with his suddenly-appeared twin had gone off well even if the bastard insisted on telling me just what (and who!) Mr. Sherrinford Holmes had been doing the past few years. If he did not keep me supplied with the occasional jam cream finger or two I would have had something to say about that!

The trouble was, when I looked into things in the days after I could not find out just what had gone wrong with my normally effective information system. When I had uncovered the ghastly connection between poor John Watson and his traitorous grandfather Sacheverell (did ever a man more deserve to meet his death on a battlefield!) I had had a feeling that something was not quite right and that the information that I was getting fitted together almost _too_ neatly. But although I had gone into things as best I could, nothing – and then six months later and just as Sherlock is but a few miles from him, up pops a brand new twin brother. Rum.

The problem was, things still _felt_ wrong. Hebby Woolsford, a friend of mine who fakes paintings for a living, once said that he thought there were two levels of the brain and sometimes things registered with the lower level but not the upper one, leaving the brain's owner feeling uneasy for no apparent reason. He could look at a painting and tell pretty quickly if it was a forgery, but it took him a bit longer to track down the tiny details that told him just what was wrong, such as a bird with slightly too long a wing or a cloud the wrong shade of grey. It was the same with this Sherrinford Holmes character; he _looked_ all right but I still felt that there was more to him that met the eye. I would be watching him!

As it turned out, he would be watching me – and one day he would change my life completely!

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	3. Case 81: The Adventure Of The Beguiling Betrayer ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. Holmes departs the British mainland just as disaster unfolds in his friend's marginally warmer part of the world. With so many people asking questions about the Army and its (mis-)management after the emonently preventable death of General Gordon, is now really the right time to erect the statue of a soldier on a Bute-shire seafront?

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

I spent the rest of the month of December and most of January on the Renfrewshire coast, recovering from the shock of discovering that I had a twin brother (who before we parted had reminded me not to forget to send Miss St. Leger a large box of jam cream fingers for coming all this way; he really did know things!). Also his warning not to go back to London had been welcome although I did not think that I could face anyone else just know, feeling as I did. Luke, Campbell and Carl, for all that they were bluff and straightforward fellows (as well as far too sharing when it came to some things!) were also perceptive, and would have swiftly spotted that something was amiss.

I decided to get myself further still from life in general and to take the ferry across to Rothesay, which place as I have said had been mentioned to me by Watson. It was a pleasant crossing given the season, although it reminded me of both the last sea-journey that I had made – to the Scilly Isles over five years back to seek out Mr. Milton Carew in The Adventure Of The Repellent Philanthropist – and Watson's reactions thereof. He hated sea-travel and his experience had been worsened by our meeting the charming Lowen, whom he had not liked at all. I do not know why; the fellow had been very helpful and attentive to me in particular. I suppose that I could and perhaps should have mentioned to Watson about the fisherman's plans to come to London in a few years' time while we had been talking in his native Cornish, but for some reason it just kept slipping my mind.

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By this time in my life only a small number of my cases had been published in the 'Strand' magazine, but I had noted that when I checked into hotels I was beginning to be recognized. Whether this was a good thing or not was debatable; at the moment I needed some quiet time to recover from the mess that my life seemed to be fast becoming. At this rate it would be as bad as one of my mother's....

I stopped that thought right there!

Of course peace was the last thing I got, as I almost immediately found myself inveigled into another case. The day after my arrival I was mulling over where to explore on the island and the fact that the bacon in this place was somewhat undercooked (although the coffee was above average) when I noticed a young lady. She was dithering across the room with the sort of look about her that I had become used to seeing in people hovering outside our house in Cramer Street; potential clients who obviously wanted to request my services but were unsure as to whether they had the courage to ring a doorbell. Sighing, I caught her eye and beckoned her over.

The lady was about twenty-five years of age, modestly attired but clearly of some means as her clothes were of the better quality. She had long and neatly curled black hair and was, I suppose, attractive in a magazine cover sort of way. 

“You wished to speak to me, madam?” I asked.

“I did”, she said. “My name is Miss Roberta Janes. It is all rather... difficult.”

'It' usually was, whatever 'it' was. I looked at her expectantly.

“It is all about poor General Gordon”, she said. “Have you seen the newspapers today?”

I had not, although from yesterday's news I could easily guess what she was alluding to. Last March General Charles Gordon had marched to secure Khartoum, a key city in the disaster area that was the Sudan just south of where Watson was based; the British Empire was all well and good, but I agreed with Watson when he said that some areas just needed to be left to the savages as they were more trouble than they were worth. But then our quasi-allies the French were casting covetous eyes at the area, so I supposed that something had had to be done.

The general had been besieged by the mad religious zealots under some leader called the Mahdi, and the government in London had dithered for far too long before dispatching a relief force. From yesterday's newspapers time had run out before they had got there; some of them were already suggesting that the Grand Old Man (Gladstone) should be rechristened Gordon's Only Murderer. Cruel but, in this instance, arguably correct.

“The city fell two days ago”, she said. “It is amazing that the news reached here so fast, but that is not directly the matter at hand. You know the long park along the parade?”

“Yes”, I said, wondering at the seeming change of topic. The local planners had for once got something right and the small town's seafront was most pleasant. Also it was protected by a nearby headland so was sheltered from the stiff offshore breezes that I knew were common around the Inner Hebrides.

“They were planning to erect a statue to my great-uncle, the late Sir Archibald St. Clair-Dowding”, she said. “He was famous for fighting in both the Seven Years' War and the American War Of Independence, and was born in Craigmore just along the coast. But an argument has arisen over his grandson, my first cousin Scott, because it is claimed that he was partly responsible for poor General Gordon's demise.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. The 'first' in her sentence had been quite unnecessary. She reddened considerably.

“We have an Understanding”, she said, “and we are very happy. But if this scandal besmirches his name.... I am sure that you know how it is, sir.”

Indeed I did. It was Watson and his traitorous grandfather all over again, and the consequences for this young 'Scott' would certainly involve ending any chance of marriage to this lady.

“I think that you had better introduce me to this 'Scott' of yours”, I said. “I promise that I will do what I can to help you both.”

She looked greatly relieved.

“Thank you, sir.”

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Miss Janes duly brought her young beau to see me that very afternoon. They do say that love is blind, but frankly I could not see what she saw in him. He was a bean-pole of a fellow, his skin as ruddy as his unusual reddish-brown hair. He was in his late twenties and I thought barely had enough muscular to hold a gun, let alone fire one! Yet she looked at him as if the sun shone out of him. Women these days!

Lieutenant St. Clair-Dowding did however score points for being a gentlemen. Unlike rather too many fellows these days he made sure to seat his lady first and poured her a glass of water before turning to me. It also did him no harm that he was not unlike Watson in appearance although much thinner (I would later have cause to remember that comparison).

“Roberta says that you may be able to help us, sir”, he said. “It is all dashed difficult, and that terrible Miss Kamer is not helping matters.”

On the other hand I also had to deduct points for his not starting at the beginning. My job was hard enough without the facts being presented in a haphazard manner.”

“Eunice – Miss Kamer – is the daughter of Colonel William Kamer, the commanding officer of Scott's regiment”, Miss Janes explained. “That is important. Tell Mr. Holmes about the promotion, dear.”

'Dear' obeyed. Perhaps allowing the fellow to have his lady might not be a totally good thing; I could see who would be wearing the trousers in _this_ marriage! If Watson had been here he would doubtless have been drawing a doormat in his notes, the villain!

“Colonel Kamer's son Stuart applied to be made lieutenant at the same time as I did”, the doorm.... the young man said. “It was expected that we would both be promoted but for some reason the Board decided that only one of us could go up, and I got it. There were several complaints of bullying against Stuart and he..... he is not really a pleasant fellow.”

Something in the young man's demeanour suggested that he was likely understating things there, and that Mr Stuart Kamer was likely several miles from being anywhere near 'a pleasant fellow'. But there was also something in the tone of both these young people when they had spoken of Miss Kamer.

“You have left something out”, I said helpfully. “Your relationship with Miss Kamer, sir.”

The lieutenant blushed fiercely, as did the soon-to be Mrs. St. Clair-Dowding.

“She is, as they say, no better than she ought to be”, the soldier said roundly. “She thought that I was too foolish to see that she only began her attentions to me once I and her brother were going for the same promotion, and despite the fact that I made it perfectly clear that I was a gentleman and had an Understanding with dear Roberta. She…. did not take well to my rejection of her advances, and I am sure that she mentioned it to her father as he was subsequently much colder towards me.”

“Back in July there was an important meeting about the plight of General Gordon. As I am sure you know even the Queen herself got involved, pressing the government to send a relief force. That force reached the city yesterday and found the enemy in possession, so had to retreat.”

I nodded. This was common knowledge.

“At the time they were planning to erect a statue of our grandfather on the seafront”, he said. “I was of course proud of that – but yesterday all hell broke loose.”

“What happened?” I asked. He smiled sourly.

“As I am sure someone in your line of work knows, sir”, he said, “whenever there is a disaster like this people look straight away for someone to blame. Not necessarily the guilty person, just anyone who they can throw to the wolves of the newspapers. A story went round – Lord alone knows who started it – that someone at that meeting had gone and leaked the plans for the rescue mission since they were printed the very next day, and as a result had to be totally redone. As everyone has now seen that delay proved fatal for poor General Gordon; the relief force would certainly have reached him in time otherwise. They are saying that _I_ was the one who leaked them!”

He sounded most indignant at that. I thought for a moment.

“Without wishing to sound rude, why were _you_ there?” I asked. “A meeting over such an important matter should surely have been restricted to only the most senior officers?”

“That was why I was there, actually”, he said. “They did not wish to risk a secretary taking the notes, and as Colonel Kamer knew that I was a good writer he had asked for me to attend.”

I thought that rather odd. If secretaries could not be trusted with military matters then why employ them in the first place, or at least why not institute better checks? And that it was this Colonel Kamer, despite not liking this fellow for rejecting his slattern of a daughter’s advances, had requested this young gentleman's presence at the meeting. Interesting.

“Who precisely was there?” I asked.

“Colonel Kamer, as I said the father of that hussy Eunice. Colonel Rosewood, who is near retirement but still a good soldier. And Colonel Banks. He is the youngest of all, although he is nearly fifty. I would stake a year's pay on both him and Colonel Rosewood being true patriots.”

 _But not Colonel Kamer, who asked for you to be there despite everything,_ I thought. _Even more interesting._

“You say that the newspapers published the plans the very next day?” I asked. 

He nodded.

“They did”, he said. I think – and it is probably bad of me to say this – that there was not much of an investigation into it because everyone suspected that it was Colonel Rosewood. He had said quite forcibly that the arrangements finally alighted on were rot, and he was known to have some financial problems. But I do not think that it was him as he does not seem the sort. In my line of work I have to assess men's characters a lot, you see.”

“When was this meeting?” I asked.

“It started at eight o' clock in the evening and lasted until ten.”

I could not help but react at that.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Yes”, he said, clearly puzzled at my reaction. “Why? How does that affect things?”

I thought for a moment.

“Did the story appear in every newspaper?” I asked.

“No, only In the 'Glasgow Herald'”, he said. “Why is that important?”

“This meeting took place in the barracks, you say?” I asked.

“Just outside Glasgow, sir. About six miles from the city.”

“An important question”, I said. “Did anyone excuse themselves during the meeting for any reason?”

He shook his head.

“Only to use the bathroom, sir”, he said. 

“I do not wish to raise your hopes”, I said, “but I must return to the mainland and visit your barracks. I hope that they keep good records, for if they do we shall be able to denounce a traitor to this country!”

They both looked at me in surprise.

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The sea-crossing back to the mainland was less pleasant that the one across to the island, the winds being much stronger now, but the council meeting to discuss the statue was in two days' time so I did not have the luxury of delay. I headed straight for the barracks where as I had thought might happen they were less than helpful, at least to begin with. Fortunately this happened to have been the barracks that my brother Carl had visited, and like so many men who had come into contact with him they remembered his name. When I was able to make them understand that I only wished to see who had left the barracks (and who had not left the barracks) at a certain time, and to speak briefly with the soldier on duty at the time, they reluctantly concurred. 

Private Alexander Merriman, a cheerful young fellow, had been on duty at the gatepost that evening, He confirmed that none gentleman had left the barracks all that evening as there was only one entrance and everyone did as I had thought have to sign in and out. He went very red when I asked him my next question, but on the promise that I would not reveal his part in matters, he admitted that I had been right. He came across as a decent man who had succumbed to a moment of weakness the consequences of which he had clearly not foreseen, and I made a mental note to make sure he was all right when the inevitable storm over this broke.

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I only just made it back to the island in time for the council meeting; bad weather had caused the ferry to be cancelled so I was compelled to hire a fishing-boat. The crossing had been so rough that even I, who unlike poor Watson was rarely sea-sick, felt nauseous on arrival and had to spend the evening resting, so I did not have time as I had hoped to speak to Lieutenant St. Clair-Dowding and Miss Janes. They were however at the back of the chamber when I arrived and were clearly both relieved to see that I had made it.

It did not take me long to identify Miss Eunice Kamer, either. She was one of those women who had clearly decided that enough make-up could remedy the lack of a pleasant smile, and incredibly for those days she actually wore _trousers!_. Still, that was one way of deferring matters; causing one or more of the elderly council members to have a heart-attack! 

As I had known she would Miss Kamer was the first to rise and declare that the statue should not be erected because of the scandal surrounding the St. Clair-Dowdings. I caught the lieutenant about to rise in protest but his future wife stopped him with a look (quite impressive!) and he subsided. Once Miss Kamer was finished I too rose.

“My name is Mr. Sherlock Holmes”, I said, “and I am pleased to inform the council that I am in a position to clear the good name of Lieutenant St. Clair-Dowding.”

“How?” Miss Kamer called out.

“The lady is reminded that remarks must not be advanced from a sedentary position”, the clerk said ponderously. “Proceed, sir.”

“It seemed impossible that any of the people at that meeting could have contacted the newspaper and leaked that story”, I said. “I have visited the barracks” - I saw Miss Kamer's face fall at that - “and have confirmed that to have been the case. None of the gentlemen left the barracks until after the story broke. Indeed no man left the barracks at all.”

“Then how did the newspaper obtain the story, sir?” one of the councillors asked dryly. “From the birds of the air, perhaps?”

Several people in the audience sniggered. 

“No”, I said. “Colonel Kamer bitterly resented his son Stuart losing out on a promotion to Lieutenant St. Clair-Dowding, and also his daughter’s failed efforts to support him and strike up a relationship with his son’s rival. He therefore used a toilet break to slip the plans to his daughter who, if I may be allowed a slight indelicacy, used her womanly wiles to charm her way past the sentry. He did not insist on her signing her name in and out, which was how the newspaper obtained the story.”

“That is a lie!” Miss Kamer shrieked.

I waved a second piece of paper at her.

“This is from the editor of the newspaper in question”, I said. “He states that a woman visited him with it and said he could have it for free provided that he published it the very next day. The description that he gave matched you perfectly, madam.”

She glared at me then made swiftly for the exit, only to find Miss Janes standing in her way and wielding her beau's walking-stick! Miss Kamer baulked; if even the insane tribes in Watson's Sudan had been on the end of that look I was sure that they would have turned tail and fled back into their desert wildernesses!

 _”Going somewhere?”_ Miss Janes said archly. _”I think not!”_

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Postscriptum: The statue of Colonel Archibald St. Clair-Dowding was duly erected on the Rothesay seafront, and is there to this day. His grandson married his Miss Janes (very wise on his part!) and they had five children, the two boys Scott and Andrew continuing the family's fine tradition of military service. I do not know what became of Miss Kamer save that she left the island to marry someone with clearly little sense or taste. Her father was very generously allowed to retire from the Army rather than be cashiered; I accepted that provided – and I made sure to make this clear – there would be no belated promotion to help boost his pension. Sadly the Army thought to wait a couple of years and then try to slip such a move through; the colonel’s treachery was in the newspaper just days later and he lost his whole pension as a result. I also made sure that Private Merriman who had allowed his baser nature to overcome his sense of duty received only a 'word' as his punishment. As Watson so rightly said, one had to take care of what the newspapers often dismissed as 'loose ends' or worse, 'collateral damage', because every one of whatever they were called involved real people.

Next year I would have Watson back. I was sure of that.

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	4. Case 82: The Adventure Of The Tarbertshire Viking ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. Holmes ensures that history repeats itself as he helps a Viking outwit a local landowner bent on destroying his father's business.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Mention of spousal abuse.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

Foreword: When Watson and I were going through what would certainly be our final collection of stories in 1936, this was one of those from those dark years when we were separated which I wished that we could have included. I remember saying to him that this was the first of two cases that were in the county of Argyllshire, and he had pointed out that this one actually took place in another 'lost' county which had not survived to this day and age. The fertile Kintyre peninsula and adjoining Knapdale once formed a separate county called Tarbertshire† after its chief town, which coincidentally was where this little adventure took place. It was also another one where the gentleman requesting my help might have been said to have been left less than totally happy with the outcome.

Although I myself think that 'traumatized' was pushing it.

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Now well beyond the reach of railways, family and (I so, so hoped!) my mother's stories, I continued with my travels. I explored the Isle of Bute some more before departing from its northern tip back into Argyllshire at a small village called Colintraive. It was strangely liberating to drive a carriage through barren countryside and along empty roads. The only place of any size was a small village called Kames not far from my destination, where I found that they manufactured gunpowder. I suppose better in this out-of-the-way location that anywhere of heavier settlement.

Portavadie was where the ferry crossed the mouth of the huge sea-loch that was Loch Fyne. Thankfully this journey was quite calm and I reached Tarbert on the long Kintyre Peninsula safely. It proved to be a pleasant little town; the ferry actually docked at a harbour about a mile to the east of it but as all those hotel breakfasts and the very occasional extra rasher of bacon (I so missed Watson handing me over his allocation!) were taking a toll of my figure, I opted to use the hotel by the harbour as my base for operations. That decision would provide me with my next case.

The landlord who checked me in was the owner, a Mr. Canute Carlsson. He was about forty years old and as his name suggested every inch the Viking, as tall as I was but much broader in the chest; I would have said that he only needed a horned helmet and a battle-axe to complete the image but Watson had once corrected me over the former, stating that this was just a myth that had appeared from Lord alone knows where. This fellow would have definitely been at home in a longboat and he also quite clearly recognized my name when I gave it. I wondered if there was something he wanted to ask me but he just gave me the sort of look that my friend Benji specialized in, as if he were the most put-upon creature in existence (poor Luke had told me that he always dreaded those because they always led to... and I had stopped him right there!). I sincerely doubted that this fellow had any such intentions; he just looked _sad_.

In my room I found a telegram waiting for me. It came from my newly-acquired twin Sherrinford, and said that I should ensure that I ‘fetched back Alexander to secure his Hephaestion’. I looked at it in confusion, and could only hope that elucidation would arrive in some form.

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Mr. Carlsson was, it turned out, a divorced gentleman with two sons, one some twenty years of age and the other fifteen. It was the elder, Olaf, who approached me the day after my arrival; I had noted with interest that there had been an unusually large serving of bacon at breakfast that morning so hopefully someone had read Watson's books and taken it on board. Perhaps even this young fellow who was pretty much a carbon copy of his father, although not yet of his musculature.

 _“You_ are Mr. Holmes?”

I do not know why so many people found that hard to believe. Ever since Watson's departure I had as I have said made an effort to look more presentable or at least less untidy, and I had checked in under that decidedly unusual name. As I have also said before, I was often minded to shoot back that no, I was some other Mr. Sherlock Holmes so there!

“I am, sir”, I said politely, careful to not make the mistake so many of my generation and call him 'young sir'. “May I be of assistance?”

He looked at me dubiously.

“Has my father approached you at all?” he asked.

“He has not”, I said. “Although I was under the impression that he was considering so doing.”

“He should have done”, the young fellow sighed. “But for all his size he eschews conflict, which is half the trouble.”

I was impressed at his use of 'eschews', which was one of my favourite words in English.

“Are _you_ able to tell me what his problem is?” I asked.

“I am”, he said carefully, “but I would rather that my father did not see me talking to you, at least until or if you can solve his problem. He is painfully shy and he most certainly would be mortified, the poor old fellow.”

I suppressed a smile at his condescension towards his parent.

“I was going to walk around the town today”, I said. “Would you like to meet me somewhere?”

He nodded.

“There is a crossroads by the corner of the harbour, near the bank”, he said.

“I will see you there in one hour”, I promised. 

“Thank you”, he smiled. “I will go and see if Cook has any bacon left.”

I smiled; he was all too clearly trying to butter me up. 

Good tactic!

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“It all goes back to my mother”, the young fellow said when we met an hour and six rashers later. “She was the daughter of Mr. Jacob Alexander, mayor of the town and the largest landowner in the shire.”

That puzzled me I admit, and only when I spoke to Watson did I realize that he had meant Tarbertshire, not the much larger Argyllshire. But perhaps that was what my twin had meant with his Alexander reference.

“She is dead?” I asked.

“It would have been better if she was!”

I was more than a little surprised at his vehemence. He smiled wanly.

“Jamie – my brother; he is away at school just now – is five years younger than me”, he said. “Our mother left when I was nine, some eleven years ago, so I remember her much more than he does. She was.....”

He took a deep breath.

“You saw Father; he is the gentlest creature to walk the earth. Mother was cruel to him. I know that you may not believe me when I say what I am about to say – I am sure no-one else would which is why I have never said anything to anyone in the town – but she actually beat him up!”

I could see why he might expect to have been disbelieved. I myself might have been dubious had not Watson once encountered a similar situation with a client of his; he too had found it hard to believe at first but had had the physical evidence to convince him. Thankfully some subtle pressure had ended the sham of a marriage and the poor fellow involved had made a much happier match later, while his former spouse had sunk into the East End crime scene and had later been found sunk in the Thames.

“Do you know where she is now?” I asked. He shook his head.

“I can trust you with this, sir; I know that from Doctor Watson's books”, he said carefully. “My mother was not only cruel to my father but also faithless; Jamie looks nothing like me and....”

He trailed off. I nodded.

“My uncle Sweyn – my father's brother – told me that she was quite open about being seen with other men”, he said, shuddering. “A few years after Jaime was born she found someone that she thought suitable on a permanent basis, and left with him. That was a decade ago, but that is nothing in a place like this, They went to live over on the east coast somewhere, Fifeshire I think, but it lasted less than a year and she fled abroad afterwards with most of his money. The thing is, my uncle said that she was always so credible and made so many people think that she was the innocent party in all this. Her father still blames my father for the whole thing – and now he is out to destroy him!”

“How can he do that?” I asked.

“The harbour is as you saw a mile east of the town”, he said. “Mr. Alexander wants to have a new harbour built on the north side of the town itself, which he says will be a lot more convenient and bring in more business.”

I saw his point.

“Coincidentally drive your father's hotel out of business”, I said. “Cunning.”

“Cunning is the one thing we need and which Father is not”, the young fellow sighed. “If only we could do the old boat thing and sort it that way!”

I stared at him in confusion.

“I am sorry”, he said. “We are so insular here, we forget outsiders know little of the shire. There is a legend – it may be true – that in the Dark Ages a Scots king and a Viking came to a deal. The Viking could have any land that he could take a ship round in a single day.”

“I would have thought that most of the islands out this far were fairly barren”, I said. 

“They mostly are”, he grinned, “but the king was outfoxed. The Viking took a boat to West Tarbert, about a mile west of the town but when his twenty-four hours started, instead of sailing off he and his crew lifted the boat onto their shoulders and carried it here. Then they sailed all the way round Kintyre – over a hundred miles by sea. The king was furious but a deal was a deal.”

“So now we have a modern Scot wanting revenge”, I said. “This will not be easy. By the way, does this Mr. Alexander have any more family?”

“Only his son, Peter”, he said. “He is away in Glasgow just now; there was some financial scandal last year and his father had to transfer all his business interests to him in order to survive. I had hoped that he would come back and maybe remedy matters but he has been busy sorting the family affairs out instead.”

Ah. Now I began to see my annoying twin’s reference. I would still have to send a telegram to Miss St. Leger though, along with another box of jam cream fingers from her local bakery. Thank heavens for the modern telegraphic system!

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Because I had not wanted to traumatize young Olaf I had not asked him about my twin’s cryptic reference, and instead went to the local library to see if my suspicions were correct. As usual they were; Hephaestion had been a general in the armies of Alexander the Great as well as being that supreme soldier’s lover. He had won many victories but had died of a fever partly because of his failure to follow medical advice, although apparently Alexander had had the doctor executed anyway. That seemed just wrong, having someone put to death for such a reason…. and why was I thinking of my brothers just then?

Miss St. Leger duly answered my request for information, and I had to grudgingly concede that my twin had indeed been right in his advice (although the wiseacre probably knew that already, damn the fellow!). Olaf confirmed to me that his father had only take up his interest in physical fitness since the stress of the new harbour thing had begun last year, which was even better. 

Mr. Jacob Alexander was about to be one very annoyed gentleman.

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“I do not get it”, Olaf complained as we waited by the waterfront in Tarbert. “Why are we watching Father do his daft running thing?”

I bit back a smile. Thinking back to Mr. Percy in Roxburgh, the solution had been obvious if perhaps a little more low-technology. I pointed to where the figure of his father could be seen running along the waterfront. The young man had told me that his father went for a run all the way to the far end of town and back again every day. 

My young companion baulked.

“What _is_ he wearing?”

What indeed? Mr. Carlson's normal running vest had been replaced with one that was not only half-missing, what remained was far too tight across his impressively muscular torso. His shorts seemed to be suffering from the same 'complaint'; they were so figure-hugging that they might almost not have been there. I was not surprised that the young man beside he had gone bright red.

“This could not be more embarrassing.... wait, what is he doing here!”

“Who?” I asked innocently. He gestured to further along the seafront.

“That is Peter Alexander”, he said, gesturing to where a slender blond gentleman of about forty years of age was walking along the seafront. “But what is he doing here? The gossip is that he would be away for at least another year.”

I could not but help draw the comparison between Mr. Peter Alexander and Olaf's father, in that they were physically similar in some aspects but looked very much like 'before' and 'after' pictures used to demonstrate the efficacy of membership of a gymnasium or some new exercise equipment. Mr. Alexander visibly baulked when he saw the hotel-owner jog by and, I observed, looked around once he was gone before covertly 'adjusting himself'.

“I still do not get it”, the young man beside me said. “And I can see why Doctor Watson sometimes gets so annoyed with you.”

That was just... all right, maybe he had a point there. Just maybe, mind!

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A week later, during which Mr. Peter Alexander had for some reason developed a preference for walking along the waterfront at the same time every day, Olaf came to me with eyes aglow. 

“You did it!” he exclaimed. “Mr. Alexander has dropped his plans for the new harbour. But how?”

I could not resist teasing him a little. He did have a point about Watson, damn the fellow!

“You are too young to be told.”

He just glared at me.

“All right”, I smiled. “But you may not like it.”

“Like what?” he asked, confused. For all that he was nearly a man, he was still innocent of some things in this world.

“When Mr. Peter Alexander saw your father jogging along in tight shorts and almost bare-chested....”

He looked at me for a moment, then finally got it.

“Oh no!”

“Not what he thought”, I smiled. “The land around the proposed new harbour site is as you said in his rather than his father's name, so when he found out that his father was planning to ruin the man that he..... you know....”

He glared at me, clearly torn between wanting to thank me and wanting me to stop talking so he could not think about..... that.

“I should thank you”, he said, shaking slightly, “but I may just send you my therapy bills!”

“You might try your father first”, I said cheerily. “He was in on the whole thing – and I have to tell you, he has some even skimpier outfits ready and waiting.”

And they say that the young generation is so good at mortifying their elders. Even if I was barely thirty, it was good to turn the tables for once.

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_Notes:_   
_† Abolished in 1633 when it was merged into Argyllshire, this sparsely-populated area was around 500 square miles (1300 km2) in area, so less than a third the size of either the county of Kent or the smallest of the United States, Rhode Island._

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	5. Case 83: The Adventure Of The Haggi ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. Holmes's quiet stay in Inveraray further up the shores of Loch Fyne is interrupted by some particularly annoying and loud guests from CHICAGO, ILLINOIS!!!!! So he arranges a little hunt for them – one which will go ever so slightly wrong.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

This was a curious matter which, although I undertook it to help someone, I was not actually employed by them as a client. Instead I deliberately created something for a mixture of my own amusement - _and for some welcome peace and quiet!_

Watson would have loved this!

Following my Viking adventure I decided to explore the Kintyre Peninsula, driving all the way round it much as those Vikings had sailed round it in ancient times. I was reminded horribly of my mother again, and not just because of that story about the real Viking spread-eagles† – 'Mad Men' - which had led to my not sleeping for two nights, but because she herself had once told us that she had Viking ancestors. Torver had of course made a rude remark about her and a battle-axe, but he had only been in hospital for a week as a result of her being Riled (a Level Three) so he had been lucky - or would have been had not Mother visited and read her stories to him every day as Father had suggested! Still, I was sure that Father had suggested those visits to Torver out of the goodness of his heart. That he was not paying Watson's friend Doctor Greenwood to invent a hearing problem which made it inadvisable for he himself to hear any of my mother's literary horrors. _And that the moon was made of green cheese! ___

__I was particularly intrigued by Campbeltown near the southern tip of the peninsula, which seemed an oddly large town for somewhere cut off from… well, pretty much the rest of the world, really. There was even a narrow-gauge railway that crossed the peninsula to Machrihanish on the west coast, which reminded me a little of the two railways I had experienced around Tal-y-llyn in Wales (it turned out that all three were the same unusual gauge, two foot and six inches which was found nowhere else). Campbeltown busied itself with both shipbuilding and whisky manufacture, and I was impressed that they had not let their isolation leave them behind in this fast-changing world of ours._ _

__I returned up the west coast of the peninsula, pausing at Tayinloan to take the ferry over to the small island of Gigha which my hotel-owner down in Campbeltown had recommended to me. It proved worthy of my attention, a barren yet strangely welcoming island that I felt free from the pressures of this modern world. Then it was back to Tarbert where I called briefly again on the Carlssons; poor Olaf was mortified that his father had taken to wearing the shredded top and tight shorts around the hotel now, even if I noticed that quite a few of the lady guests (and even a couple of the gentlemen) most definitely appreciated it. One guest in particular, a certain Mr. Peter Alexander had moved into the hotel rather than his family home. But the young man still thanked me anyway and said that his father was happy, which was all that was important at the end of the day._ _

__Tarbert lies as I mentioned earlier just above of the entrance to the impressively large Loch Fyne, so I drove all the way up that waterway's western side pausing only briefly at Lochgilphead (which as its name suggests was on the tiny Loch Gilp leading off Loch Fyne) and eventually reaching Inveraray, the traditional Campbell capital where the Marquis of Montrose had one of his famous victories. I wondered what the young soldier would have made of one of his descendants, Inspector Fraser Macdonald whose mother I knew was a direct descendant of the great soldier. LeStrade had told me that having seen a picture on his superior's desk the inspector's elder brother was very similar in looks to the ill-starred marquis. Also that his superior certainly ran his area of the Metropolitan Police with military precision._ _

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As it was a small town not even on the railway system I expected Inveraray to be a quiet place, which indeed it was – for one blessed day until a party of Americans arrived from Chicago, Illinois. I knew that they were from Chicago, Illinois, because they informed everyone in the hotel that they were from Chicago, Illinois, and with the volume of their voices probably most of Argyllshire! They were here for two weeks' hunting and after two minutes of them I was seriously considering moving on myself. I would likely have done so had it not been for Andrew.

Mr. Andrew Mallender was the cook at my hotel, and one of the few people outside of my erstwhile landladies ever to get my bacon just how I liked it (that was not, as Watson had once described it, 'strong enough to be used in house-building'). Mealtimes at least were a pleasure as our loud guests always took their meals in their rooms, something that I was sure the hotel management was grateful for as well otherwise they would have had even more people leaving to get away from them. I knew that some had quitted the place already.

Having thanked Andrew for his wonderful food, I remarked that he looked rather down.

“It's the Lee party, sir”, he said. “The Americans. They keep complaining that none of the food is to their satisfaction.”

“They could always go back to Chicago, Illinois”, I said waspishly. “I am sure that that would be to everyone's satisfaction! Or at least to the satisfaction of their ear-drums!”

He smiled at that.

“At least I am not in as bad a way as my younger brother Adam”, he said. “He had to take them out hunting yesterday, for the whole day. He came back shaking; I had never seen him drink before!”

I remembered something that Watson had once said, and a bad thought occurred to me.

“I have an idea how we might, perhaps, curb their behaviour somewhat”, I said. “But it would involve you doing something that is unethical and arguably illegal.”

“To those loudmouths?” he smiled. “Just name it!”

So I did.

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The only downside of this trick, assuming that it worked, was that it would expose me to these terrible people. Still, we all had to make sacrifices. Mine came at breakfast the next day when I was cornered in the dining-room (fortunately it was After Bacon) by the leader of the party, Mr. Jack Lee.

“The hotel-owner says you're an expert on foods!” he said loudly.

 _But unfortunately not on being prepared enough to have had ear-plugs to hand_ , I thought wryly. I would have heard him had I still been in my room!

“I am, sir”, I said. “How may I be of service?”

“Me and the crew had the most delicious thing last night”, he said. “Some sort of meat they do round here. Haggis, they called it.”

In fact I knew from the one time that I had tried it that that was one of the most revolting foodstuffs ever created, presumably Scotland’s revenge on the world of normal food. What my overly loud interlocutor had actually had was a mixture of quality mixed meat flavoured with certain mushrooms that left the eater very happy. Unfortunately not very quiet, worse luck, and I had had to tick Andrew off when he had suggested poisonous mushrooms instead especially as the thought had crossed my mind as well (I blamed Watson for that).

“Ah, the haggis”, I said. “Creatures native to this part of Scotland. Of course the ridiculous story about them having one set of legs shorter than the other so they can round round a mountain-top is utter nonsense, but yes, they are a most delicious beast. I understand that the top London restaurants pay more than any other animal for them; this is sadly one of the very few places that they still run wild away from the official haggi farms.”

_(How I was keeping a straight face while spouting all this tripe, the Lord alone knew!)_

“How do I bag me one?” Mr. Lee demanded (not asked).

“By shooting it, I suppose”, I said. “There is one thing that you should be aware of, however.”

“Not some sort of animal protection crap, is it?” he asked shortly.

“More protection for _you_ , sir”, I said. “You see, there are two types of haggis. The standard or Caledonian breed is green and red, so safe enough. But you must never go anywhere near the blue and red ones, for they are the Pictish breed. They are.... I do not like to use the word as I am not at all religious, but I would go so far as to say they are seen as almost sacred....”

“Look even better mounted on a wall, then”, he said shortly. “I will have one by the end of today!”

He strode off to arrange his day's shooting. Once he had gone I allowed myself a slight smile.

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Because I wanted to be 'in at the death' (almost literally, in this case!) I managed to inveigle myself into the shooting party and pulled Mr. Adam Mallender aside before we set out. Andrew's brother, who was absolutely nothing like him being red-headed and wiry, looked at me suspiciously at first and even more so when I explained what I had planned.

“I know they're ignorant”, he said, “but honestly, do you think will they will fall for _that?”_

“You can assist matters”, I told him, “by acting in such a way as to reinforce the illusion. I have arranged some local help as well. When the inevitable happens, here is what I need you to do.....”

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Some time later the shooting party reached a hill high above the town, and sure enough there was a number of red and green sheep-like creatures milling around on it. 

“No blue ones!” Mr. Lee snorted. “Dammit!”

“Jack dear”, his wife said. “Your blood pressure.”

I was frankly surprised that the sheep did not turn and run at her voice, which was even louder than her husband's. 

“If present, the Pictish or blue haggis is always leader of the flock”, I explained helpfully. “They are therefore in the centre, but will usually charge aggressively at the first sign of trouble. The best way to incite that is to fire a single shot into the air which will scatter the rest of the flock.”

I cast an eye to a nearby field in which seven very burly Scotsmen were repairing a barn, and smiled. Mr. Lee took his gun and fired it upwards three times.

Several things happened in quick succession. Not surprisingly the sheep on the hill scattered with impressive speed, except for one of them which lay on the ground, immobile. The Scotsmen working on the barn stopped and came across to the wall of our field, and Adam went to examine the stricken animal. He returned looking grim.

“Dead”, he said. “Shock, I think. And..... _it was a Pict!”_

“Oh well done Jack!” his wife trilled. “You got one without even trying!”

It took the party rather too long even for them to realize that something was definitely not right. The burly Scotsmen were advancing on them, looking less than friendly. The two ghillies carrying their own guns and supplies were backing away from them. And Adam took one look at the advancing men then threw down his bag then yelped and fled back down the hill to Inveraray with impressive speed, the ghillies in hot pursuit.

“What has gotten into him?” Mr. Lee demanded testily.

“I did try to warn you”, I said, pointedly putting some distance between myself and the now visibly angry Scotsmen. “To these simple folk the blue haggi are sacred; some even believe they are imbued with the spirits of their ancestors.”

“Piffle!” Mrs. Lee snorted, although even she looked worried (I could tell as her volume had decreased considerably).

“The only way to appease the spirits is, they believe, to sacrifice their attacker within twenty-four hours”, I said. “But perhaps the local police-station might stretch to a constable or two in an effort to try to protect you....”

Mr. Lee suddenly threw down his gun and bolted after Adam, followed quickly by his ghastly family and friends. I smiled, then sent one of the menacing Scotsmen – Peter, the town veterinarian – to see if the sheep that we had tranquillized earlier was all right. The others moved quickly after the Lee party.

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“Seriously?” Andrew said as he handed me a plateful of delicious bacon. _”Haggi?”_

“It could have been worse”, I said spooning out the ketchup. “Indeed, when they finally make it back to Chicago, Illinois, I can guarantee that it will be.”

“Why?” he asked.

“Because the local newspaper will have the whole story of how they were made a fool of!” I grinned. “The wonders of the telegraphic system.”

A happy ending all round, I decided. Even for the sheep, whose paint would soon wear off in this damp climate. Honestly, some people will believe anything!

Watson would have been so proud of me.

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_Notes:_   
_† A Viking punishment inflicted on their captives and sometimes even by their somewhat annoyed captors on them, this involved staking the body to the ground so it was spread out, then slicing down the chest, reaching inside and dragging the lungs over the victim's head while they were still breathing.... and as if you have to ask, yes. Lady Aelfrida Holmes did manage to make it even worse!_

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	6. Case 84: The Adventure Of The Colourful Stripper ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. Surely even Holmes cannot be all at sea on an inland loch, so why does one local business's boats keep sinking? The great detective tracks down a stripper and someone gets an earful as a result.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

It was March now, but being Scotland that merely meant that the rain was a touch warmer and had veered from near-horizontal back to near-vertical. From Inveraray I crossed to arguably one of Scotland's largest and most famous lochs, Lomond, reaching it at a small village also called Tarbet. The loch was by no means the largest or most impressive body of water in North Britain but the famous song (then some forty years old) along with the place's proximity and easy access to the mess that was Glasgow made it a popular holiday destination, particularly for those who followed their Queen on her annual pilgrimage to the Highlands. It was also a land- rather than a sea-loch, so it was very calm. 

I found myself a hotel at the village of Luss about halfway along the western shore and settled in for some peace and quiet. The railways had by this time reached Balloch some nine miles away on the extreme southern tip of the loch (the famously scenic West Highland line to Fort William and Mallaig which would skirt the northern fringes around Tarbet then lay another nine years into the future). Here in Luss all was quiet and I settled in for some well-earned peace and quiet.

Again, I should have known better.

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The first sign of trouble came when I returned from a walk on the third day to a commotion in the hotel. A visibly angry family, all of whom seemed to have decided to undertake bathing while fully dressed for some inexplicable reason, were busy shouting over each other while the hotel owner was doing his best to placate them. I could not make head nor tail of what the cause of their being so wet was, so decided to adjourn to the peace and quiet of the small bar until they had gone. Or at least been dried off.

Angus, the barman whose blazing red thatch could likely have been seen by Watson down in Egypt if he had squinted in the right direction, grinned at me as he served me a coffee. They were not supposed to serve hot drinks at the bar but he knew me well enough to 'bend' that rule a little. I sighed happily as I imbibed the refreshing beverage; what with my bacon in Inveraray at least some things were still right with my world. The bacon here, if not as good as Andrew's, was quite acceptable even if I still missed taking the very occasional rasher† off a certain fellow diner.

“That's the second lot in the drink this month”, Angus observed. “Poor Callum; he won't have a business left if this keeps up.”

“If what keeps up?” I asked.

“The Forsythes took one of his boats out today but it sprang a leak”, he explained. “Same thing happened the to the Murrays though in their case it was a lot funnier; their daughter Jennifer had been shrieking at everyone for days and was a lot quieter after her dousing.”

I thought about that.

“But the Forsythes are just a normal family?” I asked, thinking that if there was anything here then there had to have been a motive, and likely against the business-owner rather than the soaked families. He nodded.

“They're a nice bunch”, he said. “We get a right mix up here; some like Madam Murray I'd willingly push in the loch myself, but they're all right.”

I had been surprised by the number of businesses in such a small, isolated place, although there was a daily steamer from Balloch which called here and at other points around the long shoreline.

“Has your Mr. Callum been the only gentleman whose boats have been prone to sinking?” I asked.

“Why?” he asked with a smile. “Is the great detective going to stop holes from appearing in boats?”

I grinned.

“This great detective might”, I said. “Any chance of another coffee?”

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There were no less than four boating concerns along the Luss waterfront, although all were small with the largest (Hardy’s, the one affected) having only five boats. I could see the barman's point; there was more than enough competition to fill the void if one business went under. That had to be the motive, which meant that I just needed to find the means and the opportunity. 

I decided to approach Mr. Henry Forsythe, now recovered from his soaking.

“It was I suppose fortunate that it happened when it did”, he admitted. “Elsie wished to take a boat out but she did not want to go far from the shore, even when I pointed out that with all those islands the loch could not be that deep. So we stayed close in, and that was when it happened.”

“I find such things curious”, I said, “and I would be grateful if you could answer me something. Did a hole appear in the boat say by a plank failing, or did the thing just start sinking.”

He looked surprised at my question but answered.

“I did not notice it at first”, he admitted. “I thought that every boat might have a small amount of water in the bottom of it. But I do not think that there was a hole in the boat as such, sir. The water just seemed to come in between the planks. I do not think that it can have been made very well.”

“That is one possibility”, I conceded. “Thank you for your time, sir.”

He looked at me curiously.

“Do you think that there was more to this, may I ask?” he asked. “Or that it may not even have been an accident?”

“I do not yet know”, I said. “Clearly since another family suffered the same sousing, you yourselves were not the target; I think therefore that the business likely was. It will however take me some little time to establish just how it was done.”

“Would you be able to contact me and let me know if you do?” he asked. “You see, Elsie has become terrified of going out on the water since this happened. If she knew that it were not just an accident, I am sure that it would make her so much happier.”

“If you leave me your card, I promise that I will let you know what I find out”, I said.

“Thank you, sir.”

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I had taken care to intercept Mr. Forsythe away from the hotel as I did not wish for whoever might be behind this to know that I was investigating them. I therefore decided to make my next inquiries down in Balloch where, Angus told me, there were several boat-builders. I chose Schwartz & Sons and found myself talking to Mr. Joseph Schwartz, the owner's son and the general manager despite being barely eighteen years of age. He was however clearly a competent fellow and when he understood what I was after he led me round to the main yard.

“Those are the chemicals you would be wanting, sir”, he said gesturing to where a row of what looked like paint-pots were on a bench.

“They all look very similar”, I said. “How can you tell them apart, may I ask?”

“See the pink dot on the three on the left?” he asked. “We add a small amount of pink paint to each tin when we get it. The shop really should make them more different themselves; any fool could use the wrong one if they were not careful.”

 _Or if they were being malicious_ , I thought.

“The pink is the one we use on all boats sir, as what you might call a sealant”, he explained. “Otherwise water would work its way in through the seams. It is guaranteed waterproof for at least five years; it would probably last quite a bit longer but we do not chance it when we are dealing with human lives.”

He gestured to the other four pots.

“The blue dot means those are the stripper, sir”, he said. “When we do a boat we have to remove all the old protection first or the new one cannot get a grip. We do that ourselves for the bigger boats that people leave here, but the folks who run row-boats on the loch like up at Luss, they prefer to do their own. They always do it at the same time for each boat, at least every five years unless there's a problem that means it needs doing sooner. I know because some of them told me that.”

“Hypothetically”, I said, “what would happen if someone mixed the two up and applied the remover second?”

He shook his head.

“That could never happen, sir!” he said firmly. “I will not open the tins for you but the stripper smells _vile!_ No-one could mistake them.”

“Why do you need the colours then?” I asked, confused. He smiled.

“Mac, one of the fellows who work here, has no sense of smell”, he said. “Great for him but we use the colours as a reminder.”

I sighed. I could see where all this was leading and it would not be pleasant for someone.

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After some more inquiries I took the evening boat back to Luss and was fortunate enough to encounter Mr. Callum Hardy in the hotel. With him was a young lad of about fifteen years old who I knew from what Mr. Schwartz had told me had to be his youngest son James. It seemed that this case was coming to a rather speedier conclusion than I had expected.

Mr. Hardy looked at me suspiciously.

“I’ve heard you've been sticking your nose into my business, Mr. Holmes”, he said sharply. “Why?”

“Because if current trends continue, you may no longer have a business”, I said. “I had a suspicion that your boats were being sabotaged, as it seemed highly unlikely that you alone would be so unlucky all of a sudden. I have to tell you that that suspicion was quite correct.

He was clearly still wary of me.

“Say on”, he said.

“Although I have a lot of knowledge about some things I have painfully little about others”, I said, almost glad that I did not have a certain medic by my side who would certainly be faking a shocked expression at my modesty, the snarky bastard. “So I asked an expert, and he was most helpful. He is the gentleman who sold you the sealant pots that your business recently purchased in order to protect your vessels.”

“Joe down in Balloch”, he said. “Good man. So?”

“Mr. Schwartz was most helpful when I explained matters to him”, I said. “He thought it decidedly odd that your son had purchased six tins of paint-stripper but only two of the sealant - _along with a small pot of pink paint!_

Young Master Hardy made a sudden move towards the door but his father was quicker, grabbing him by the ear and earning himself a pained yelp.

“Keep going”, he growled, his voice suddenly tinged with menace.

“Proving this should not be difficult”, I said. “If you doubt my word you can apply some of the surface paint that you have, take your craft out onto the loch – perhaps not too far – and see if it starts to wear off. I would recommend however that you first inquire to your son's finances. As a youngest son of three whose elder brother is already married and expecting his firstborn soon, he would almost certainly not inherit the business, so he must have been well paid by one of your rivals. Given that most banks do not like to be associated with criminality in any way shape or form, I am sure that you could find the one that opened an account in his name and that they would tell you or the police who paid moneys into said account for him.”

The businessman's face darkened.

“Thank you, sir”, he said gravely. “Come on, Jim! You’re going boating!”

He dragged the boy out by the ear, still squealing. I did not have to be any sort of detective to know that someone was in for a most unpleasant night, and a pretty difficult next few years as well.

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Mr. Hardy went to the police-station the following morning and it was soon established that one of his rivals, a Mrs. Patricia Glass, had been paying his son to wreck his business in return for cash and an easy job with her own company. Which soon after went out of business due to its owner having to spend some years in gaol for their foul actions. Even better, Angus brewed me up several cups of celebration coffee!

After much pleading from his wife Mr. Hardy agreed that upon completion of his son's own time in gaol he would pay for the boy to go to the United States, which was arguably for the best. I also remembered to write to the Forsythes about why their boat had sunk, so that Mrs. Forsythe need no longer fear going out on the water, dispatching the letter at the same time as my latest missive to Watson. I was sure that he would be pleased to see that I was taking an interest in things that, at the start of my career, I would surely have eschewed. His friendship had made me a better man and I looked forward to having him back in my life. Soon.

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_Notes:_   
_† Or four._

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	7. Case 85: The Battle For The Golden Guerdon ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. Of all the incidents in which Holmes found himself involved over the years, this had to be one of the strangest! Once again there is sabotage in the air as some people will do anything – or anyone - to win a coveted award.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

Foreword: Although this like all of my Early Hiatus adventures _sans_ Watson was deemed not for publication, he suggested that I append this note concerning a curious irony concerning the matter. A railway-themed case took place in an area already linked to one railway disaster and which would may years later become the starting-point for the greatest loss of life ever seen on the tracks. Eleven years before this story is set, poor railway practices had led to a crash at nearby Bo'ness Junction (through which I would shortly pass) that had cost some sixteen people their lives; bizarrely like the Thorpe (Norwich) and Shipton-on-Cherwell accidents that too had been also in the year that I had first met Watson. Tragically, just like at Thorpe arrangements that would have averted the disaster had been about to be put in place. But the sixteen deaths at the Junction paled into insignificance when some thirty years on from my time there, Larbert itself was the starting-point for one of the trains involved in the tragic Quintinshill disaster which claimed over two and twenty-five hundred lives. Watson and I would have someone involved in that tragedy – well, sort of.

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It was April, and the country was breathing a small sigh of relief that at least one of the many dangers that could have caused conflict between the Great Powers had been if not resolved, then at least partially remedied. Rival colonial claims in the Dark Continent had seemed a likely cause of trouble sooner rather than later but the Germans, acting for once as mediators as they had few holdings there, had been able to effect an agreement of who should have what spheres of influence in developing these backward lands (frankly I concurred with Watson that most of them were more trouble than they were worth, and that the much talked about White Man’s Burden was something that did not need picking up in the first place). There would as things turned out be more than a few bumps along that road, particularly for our own Nation, but given in mind the general mess almost everywhere else I suppose that one should have been thankful that at least one thing was no longer a problem. 

Watson had written in his last letter that he was very busy, as the Army was desperately trying to strengthen its position in southern Egypt to forestall any advance from the mad Mahdi now in charge of the rogue Mohammedan state in the Sudan, which was the last thing that the Continent's new peace needed. The Sudan had been accepted as within the British sphere of things, but as I have mentioned before, with the French holding lands either side of it Paris might well be tempted to step in if it saw the opportunity of expanding its rule right across the whole Continent, especially with the area also controlling Egypt's water-supply. And all those extra soldiers meant a lot more work for my friend, which made me worry that when his term expired next April he might choose not to return to England. He was all duty and patriotism, after all.

It may have been spring, but Scotland was uncommonly cold. And although there was nothing that I could quite put my finger on, I still felt that there was something that he was not telling me. Which worried me even more.

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In again avoiding Glasgow (whose outer reaches again proved it well worth avoiding) it took me three changes to cross Scotland from west to east. Starting at Balloch where I had visited the boatyard in my last case, I had to change at Dalmuir, Maryhill and Larbert, the latter being a reasonably pleasant small town. I had been aiming to continue to the county town of Stirling and on into the north of the country, but I felt an inexplicable urge to visit Linlithgow, of which Watson had spoken the one time when telling me about Mary Queen of Scots. I had as I have said little interest in history except when it impinged on my own work, as had been the case more than once, but I loved to listen to him talk about things he enjoyed as I knew that none of his clients ever would. Indeed they would have considered a doctor who was learnéd about history rather strange, and quite possibly not someone whom _they_ might wish to be have been treated by. Fools!

I must really have been missing my friend when I was also missing a subject as dry as history!

I had planned to spend only one night in Larbert but I was distracted that evening by an article in the local newspaper. The Caledonian Railway Company was running a competition for the Best Kept Railway Station, and in the Small Stations category for this area three stations on the line up to Stirling – Larbert North, Torburn Junction and Bellswood – were the finalists. I asked the hotel owner, an anaemic looking fellow called Mr. Frank Burstow, if this was really a big thing.

“O' course, sir!” he said, looking at me as if I had just uttered a blasphemy. “The Golden Guerdon is _huge_ round here.”

I looked at him in bewilderment.

“The Golden what?” I asked.

“That's the trophy they give to the winning station each year”, he explained. “Torburn and the North Station used to duke it out between them every year, but there's Mr. Johnson now at Bellswood and he improved the place so much that he won last year.”

“I suppose all the men are local, so that makes it worse?” I asked.

“Sort of”, he sniffed. “Mr. Johnson, he's from _Linlithgow_ , sir!”

He made that sound like that the fellow came from Timbuctoo, and as he was called away I was unable to immediately find out why. Fortunately the hotel was once again blessed with an informative barman, a Vincent this time, who most definitely earned his tip by not only providing me with excellent coffee but also in explaining his employer's words.

“There's a bit of a divide between us and the folks from Lothian, sir”, he said. “Some Stirling men, they regard the Lothian crew as a bit too English; the area was an English kingdom centuries back. Mr. Johnson lives in Borrowstounness – we shorten it to Bo'ness – which is just over the border into Linlithgowshire.”

“I may be visiting Linlithgow later”, I said. “Do you know which of these three stations might be likely to win this competition?”

He grinned slyly.

“It all comes down to Mr. Watson at the North Station and Mr. Jones at Torburn”, he said.

“Not Mr. Johnson at Bellswood?” I asked. 

He shook his head.

“He won last year, sir”, he said. “They'll make sure that he won't win this time round. You'll see if you look on your way back through here; the judging is this Sunday and they always announce the result for the evening papers.”

I wondered just he could be so sure about the outcome of the contest for... a golden guerdon. Really?

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It was a Thursday when I arrived, so I decided to linger at least until Sunday and take a look into this curious little contest. First I hired a carriage and visited each of the three stations; the line to Stirling had as one might expect a good service but the small stations were served only every two hours. 

Larbert North was the first station on my list, and I had to admit that it looked positively pristine. I should perhaps have been more kindly disposed to the fellow at this station as he was a Watson by name, but he was short, squat, scowling and looked absolutely nothing like my friend who, I had noted by the calendar that morning, was now one year away from his probable (no, definite) return. This Mr. Zechariah Watson was clearly on the prowl for any speck of dust that he might find; I smiled to think how he must suffer when a dirty great steam locomotive charged through his station covering it with soot. He likely dispatched someone to rush along after it with a dustpan and brush!

The next station was Torburn Junction which, despite the important-sounding name, was merely an exchange platform for the short Alloa branch. It was slightly smaller than Larbert North and its stationmaster Mr. Joshua Quentin was one of the largest fellows that I had ever seen, width-wise at least. He spent the whole time I was there sitting on a bench ordering his staff to rush about – Lord alone knows why as only one train came through while I was there – and glaring suspiciously at me. I may or may not have taken out a notebook and jotted a few things down just to annoy him ever further (I did).

Finally it was Bellswood and the 'foreigner' Mr. Brian Johnson, who I noted treated his staff far better than either of his rivals. His station was the smallest of the three although still possessed of two platforms and with some excellent topiary, which I had always considered one of the most attractive features of the Victorian railway station. It may have been because of the better impression that he made but I considered his station to be the best of the three, although there was not much in it. It might be a close run thing when the inspectors came round. 

But not if I had anything to do with it!

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I spent the rest of Friday rather pleasantly, first calling in at a costume-shop where I made several purchases before returning to the hotel and writing out two sets of identical notes with which I planned to have some amusement at the expense of at least two of these stationmasters. I placed each inside an envelope then spent the rest of the evening reading quietly. I had had one of my regular telegrams from Luke informing me that all was quiet in southern Egypt just now (good) but not in his room as Benji had come round unexpectedly and had brought Balin and Balan with him so they had all..... damnation, now I would never look at handcuffs the same way again!

On Saturday I rose early as I had several trains to catch. I had purchased myself another book to pass the time as I would be the best part of two hours at each of the three stations. At each stop I spent a considerable walking around, trying (and very obviously failing) to remain unnoticed while taking notes about everything and anything. In all three cases I got some strange looks but, as I had expected, no-one actually dared to challenge me. Each thought, as I had known they would think, that I was a preliminary inspector in disguise making sure that their stations were well-presented not just for the day of inspection.

Sunday was very much the Sabbath even in this more industrial part of Scotland, so I wondered if Vincent had been right when he had said that the competition results would be in the evening newspaper. But he was, and he had a copy with him when I came down for a coffee.

“It's all around the town, sir”, he said. “Mr. Johnson up at Bellswood won the Golden Guerdon!”

I feigned what I believed was a decent surprise.

“I thought that you said he was unlikely to win because his rivals would stop him?” I asked innocently.

Obviously my acting was not that good. He stared at me suspiciously.

“Yes”, he said. “Mr. Quentin and Mr. Watson; word is that they had both arranged for some of their men to go round and mess up Bellswood on Saturday night.”

“What went wrong, then?” I asked.

“Seems some inspector visiting the North station had a letter fall out of his pocket”, he said, looking askance at me. “It said that the _preliminary_ inspection results were that Bellswood was only average and the fellow in charge of it downright uncivil, so Mr. Watson sent his men to turn over Torburn instead.”

“That was still wrong of him, either way”, I said reprovingly.

“Funny thing was”, the barman went on still looking hard at me, “this fellow must have done the same at Torburn. He must have had two letters in his pocket for some weird reason. So Mr. Quentin sent his crew to mess up the North station.”

“All this over a small trophy”, I said. “Tut tut, how very immature.”

He shook his head at me.

“Doctor Watson was right”, he smiled. “You are a bastard - _sir!_ ”

I had to let him have that one.

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	8. Interlude: Stationery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. There are errors of judgement, and then there are Mr. Randall Holmes's errors of judgement for which one day the word 'supersized' will have to be invented.

_[Narration by Mr. Campbell Kerr, Esquire]_

When you are a man who sells his body for a living and your father is a knight of the realm, social interactions tend to be difficult, to say the least. Fortunately my father Sir Edward Holmes is an understanding fellow, although being married to my stepmother he has to be. Alan has still not forgiven me for encouraging him to read 'True Grit' the other week, that story of hers about the three musketeers who pretended to work as road repair-men until some fellow who had insulted them came along, when they took turns to lay rather more than a new road surface. 

He had certainly made me pay for it! A whole day of him, Balin and Balan taking turns to leave me a complete wreck. It had been _glorious!_

My father shook his head at me when I sat down carefully opposite him.

“I read about that attack on Doctor Watson's place in Egypt yesterday”, I said. “Front page news, surprising given the usual level of interest in that part of the world. Unlike today’s correction that said that it had actually happened elsewhere, which was buried at the bottom of page twenty-seven. What is going on, do you know?”

“Randall”, my father sighed. “He knows that Sherlock is scanning the newspapers every day so he ‘leaned’ on someone at the newspaper to put that in just to make him worry.”

I stared at him in shock.

“That is cruel!” I protested. “You must know how they feel about each other. Alan says that he expected to see hearts and flowers the last time he saw the two of them.”

“Your friend is too much of a romantic”, my father smiled, “although judging from your appearance today he presumably did not take well to my dear wife's latest masterpiece?”

I nodded and tried not to look too self-satisfied (I arguably failed in that aim).

“Once for each musketeer!” I smiled. “The twins took the chance to remind me that when they work together, they _really_ work together!”

He shook his head at me.

“Randall still cannot grasp why Sherlock does not jump to his every command like the people in his office have to”, my father said. “He does not like his and the doctor's friendship at all, which he thinks is the cause of said reluctance. He said that it would be better if the doctor never came back.”

“I bet my stepmother had something to say about that!” I said firmly.

Too late I realized that I had implied that my father was totally under the thumb of his terrifying wife. He was, but it was a little impolitic to actually say it. 

The baronet smiled sourly.

“He made sure that she was not around when he spoke”, he said. “That way, he _thought_ that he was safe.”

My keen instinct for danger kicked in and I instinctively crossed myself, calculating just how quickly I could make the front door. Someone in my line of work really did not need to be here when the emergency services arrived.

“I may have accidentally paid one of the servants to pass it on to her”, my father said with a slight smile. “Ant today she received proof of his newspaper deception – just before he arrived for a visit.”

I crossed myself again, wondering about Mr. Randall Holmes's life insurance and if he.....

”YOU TOLD MY SWEET BABY BOY _WHAT???”_

The stentorian voice echoed around the house, and quite probably up and down the whole street. My father crossed himself as well. There was a horrible silence followed by some pained screaming in what was definitely a male voice, albeit two octaves higher than any male voice should have managed outside a choir stall.

 _“Now_ I remember where I left that metal ruler!” my father said with another smile.

I liked my father!

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	9. Interlude: All Clear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. Sometimes no news is good news – although perhaps not for everybody.

_[Narration by Mr. Lucifer Garrick, Esquire]_

I came round to the feeling of the Banjax trying to push its way through to my stomach as Benji fucked out his latest bout of supreme happiness, angst, or whatever he was feeling this time. And to think – I had caused this!

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Benji had had his first son and namesake in October of 'Eighty-Three and his second Billy in November last year. I knew that he and Bertha wanted a large family (although I had not yet been brave enough to ask just how large!) so when six months had passed and Bertha was somehow not pregnant (see under feeding the five thousand and other miracles) Benji had panicked, I had worn the Panama hat, and I had needed a whole day off work as I had been unable to sit down afterwards.

God but it had been wonderful!

Benji was still worried about his wife, who apart from being the luckiest person in all existence loved him just as much in return, so I had persuaded him to take her to be looked over by a Harley Street specialist, Doctor Charles Novello (fortunately he owed me for a small favour I had done him as part of my work as even my salary would have been stretched to pay his charges). He had diagnosed her as suffering from a mild and non-serious illness and had reassured the two of them that a course of tablets would certainly put her to rights. Benji had been over the moon!

And now so was I! 

“He gave Bet some funny tablets which he said should make her feel more herself”, Benji said as he shredded my insides, frowning adorably for such a big man. “He said she should take them until they run out – some time in September, he said – and only then should we try for number three.”

I was about to nod in agreement when the sheer horror of that statement hit me. I stared at my lover in shock. And worse, he was already bringing out the Sad Face which meant my chances of refusing what I knew was coming next had just been set to zero.

“Would you mind me having you until the end of summer, Mr. Lucifer sir?” he asked. “Only if that's all right, of course.”

Four to five months. Of sex with this insatiable horn-dog. God help me!

I only realized that I was nodding when I saw that happy smile on his face. Then he somehow contrived to thrust even harder, and I passed out again.

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I made what was arguably one of the worst decisions of my already shortened life when I write to Sherlock about a deception practised by his vile brother Randall, who had arranged for a piece of news about fighting in Egypt to be ‘misprinted’ on the front page of the ‘Times’ with the location of Watson’s base instead of the real place. It should have been good news for him that I had cleared things up – well, his mother had when she had confronted Randall who was once again enjoying hospital food – but I made the mistake of remarking on how happy I was for Benji. Somehow Sherlock misinterpreted this as boasting, and before I could write back and explain things to him, Benji arrived for his now twice-daily session – with not just Balin and Balan in tow, but also a whole bag of 'supplies' that some evil, twisted, sick little brother had ordered for them all.

I was a dead man walking!

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	10. Case 86: A Case In Blackness ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. While visiting one of many places associated with the troubled Mary Queen of Scots, Holmes is approached and asked to help someone make a man disappear!

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

My little railway ‘roundabout’ in Stirlingshire had quite lifted my spirits, although the letter I got from Watson before I left also helped (I owed it the offices of the efficient Miss St. Leger that my itinerant nature did not prevent me from receiving his communications, even if I pointedly did not ask as to how she always knew just where I was). My friend sounded more hopeful now that the Army had a large number of men defending southern Egypt, and he also asked me if he might start work on The Adventure Of The Yellow Face which had brought us 221B, the house that neither of us lived in.

 _Yet_ , I told myself firmly.

That lift had come after a shock during my recent adventure, when I had read the 'Times' recently that the rebels had mounted a major raid on Watson's base and had killed many men. I had a panicked few hours of sending frantic telegrams to London, but Miss St. Leger came through for me in my hour of need. First she found that the raid had actually been on a place with a similar name much closer to the border, which greatly relieved me, then she came up trumps in discovering that a certain lounge-lizard of a brother had paid a journalist to 'misread' the name of the place, and to also make sure that the correction out out the following way was hidden so far into the newspaper that I had missed it. I swore that Randall would pay for that, but the Fates in the form of my mother caught up with him first. Campbell wrote to me that he had been visiting our father – well, his father, technically speaking – when the latter had mentioned about Randall's deception to my mother. And – something else I would never forgive my lounge-lizard of a brother for – he had said that it would be better if Watson never came back! Father had passed that on too.

By some possibly non-coincidental alignment of the Fates, Father had told Mother all this just before Randall had called at the house. Even more ‘coincidentally’ he had just happened to have left a reinforced metal ruler in Mother’s room. She had been Livid (what Anna called a Level Seven), and it was fortunate that she was far-sighted enough to only use rugs from which blood would easily wash out. I did consider sending Randall a Get Well Slowly card but Campbell told me that Father – I would still think of him as such for all he had done for me – had managed to calm Mother down by recommending that she show mercy in visiting Randall in hospital and reading him her stories until he got better. 

I believe that the apposite saying goes something like 'sometimes, one has to be cruel to be kind'!

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I was already past that point in my career when I had doubtless made all sorts of enemies, quite a few of the sort who would have happily ordered me to be killed had it now been for the friendship of Mr. Kuznetsov whom I had helped out on more than one occasion and whose displeasure invariably led to those on the end of it experiencing (briefly) what the bottom of the Thames looked like close up. But I had felt that being so far removed from London I could surely relax my guard for a time. Which was why when I realized that I was being followed or at least observed, I did not like it at all.

I had indeed come to Linlithgow where I was touring the palace ruins (I know that I had said that I would usually eschew such places but Watson had a thing for anything to do with Mary Queen of Scots, and I hoped that a card from here might show him that I was thinking of him). I frankly did not see what my friend got out of old buildings many of which were just ruins, but being here somehow made me feel a little closer to him even if he was a thousand miles away. Yet while walking around the castle I had quickly realized that someone was following me. 

I did not react but strolled along the path close to the building and around the corner, where I leaned against a wall and waited. Moments later a young fellow who could barely have been twenty-one came walking quickly round after me, and stopped in alarm when he saw me watching him. He was definitely not much to look at; a clear foot shorter than myself, short-cut dark hair and an unfortunate attempt at what may or may not have been meant to be a moustache. 

“You were following me”, I said simply. “Why?”

He blushed fiercely.

“You are Mr. Holmes”, he said, so quietly that I could barely hear him. “I work at the accountants' in the town; I was doing the hotel accounts in the room behind where you checked in.”

“You are?” I prompted.

“Mr. Walter Hood, sir.”

The name meant nothing to me.

“Why were you following me?” I pressed again.

“I need your help”, he said. “I need to make someone disappear.”

All right, _that_ got my attention!

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Mr. Hood lived in Blackness, which turned out to be a tiny village on the coast some miles north of the town. There was no railway to such a small place and as he had walked into Linlithgow I hired a cart for the journey there.

“I should like to tell you about this as we go”, he said once we had left the town behind. We might have been between the two greatest cities in Scotland but the countryside was deserted, the nearby Firth of Forth sparkling in the afternoon sun. 

“Please do”, I said. “Your request is most unusual and I am looking forward to hearing the reasons behind it.”

“Have you read anything about the Crimean War?”

I had not been expecting that. Unfortunately Watson was the history buff between us.

“I only know what little I have read in the newspapers”, I said. “We won, that I know.”

“This concerns one of the less well known parts of that war”, he said. “Indeed I would wager less than one in a hundred people has heard of it. We British decided that in an attempt to overstretch the Russians we would make a landing on the east coast of Siberia.”

“That is far away indeed”, I said. 

“It took a lot of organizing”, he said. “It was about thirty years ago and my grandfather Sir James Hood was involved; I as I am sure you have worked out was not born at the time. My father died when I was young and my grandfather raised me, so I was close to him. He was in charge of a squadron that had been on patrol around the Indian Ocean and was in the East Indies at the time, so he was not too far away. It was in Africa that he had picked up Joe.”

“Who is Joe?” I asked.

“My grandfather kept all the newspapers at the time to show me, otherwise I might not have believed it myself”, he smiled. “Joe was one of those that my grandfather managed to rescue from slavery, and he asked to come on board the ship as he had always wanted to sail. He was only about twelve at the time; he does not know his exact age but now he is about forty-four. He was with him at the landing – and he saved his life!”

I still did not see what the matter was here.

“The newspapers at the time made a huge thing of it”, he explained. “Of course it was all 'would you believe that a _black_ man could save a _white_ man's life? Horribly condescending and poor Joe was mortified at being a hero, if briefly. But recently it all went wrong.”

“How?” I asked.

“My grandfather died”, he said with a sigh. “That was just over two years ago; my father had as I said predeceased him but fortunately the terms of his will meant that I had come into my money at eighteen rather than having to wait until I was twenty-one. However my mother – she has always hated Joe, and she made his life so awful with her constant visits that I sold the house and decided to move.”

I could guess the rest now.

“She has kept up her campaign?” I hazarded. He nodded glumly.

“I moved from Edinburgh to Dunbar, then to the Melrose in the Borders”, he said. “She tracked us down both times, through the estate agent. At Melrose I had a stroke of luck; the other agent in town had the house in Blackness which needed a tenant for a few months as an army captain in India had inherited it but could not be back for a few months, so the place needed a tenant. Also Mike – the agent – disliked the other agent in town who, as I said, had ratted on us to my mother, so he promised to keep the place secret. I am looking for somewhere permanent and hoping to throw her off our trail for good.”

I thought that he was almost certainly hoping in vain, as that sort of pursuer would likely never give up. Unless…… now that was an idea.

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Mr. Joseph Hood was indeed in his early forties, a tall almost wispy fellow who looked a little like Benji back in London but with grey hair and nothing of the latter's definition. He was clearly uneasy at his friend having brought me in to help, and given all that he had been through I could hardly blame him.

“Your friend did right to approach me”, I said. “I think that I can help you.”

I turned back to the younger man.

“When was your last contact with your mother?” I asked.

“January”, he said. “Two days after New Year's Day. She had sent a card to the first agent I told you about but he was unable to help her. She tried Mike as well, but he said that I had not used him so he had no idea where we had gone.”

“I shall wire a friend of mine in London and make arrangements”, I said. “We need to get you killed. Both of you.”

The younger man jumped at that.

“Me, sir?” he asked.

“Your vengeful mother would almost certainly continue to pursue you even if she thinks your friend is no more”, I said. “Believe me, I know the sort. Fortunately once you are both officially dead she will stop looking although I may use my contacts to plague her with some additional problems, just to keep her busy. Because that sort of person deserves some extra troubles in their life.”

“I did look into a small house at a place called Southerness down on the Kirkcudbrightshire coast”, the younger man said. “You quite liked that Joe, did you not?”

His friend smiled at him and nodded, but did not speak.

“Then we shall establish you with two new identities and you can purchase your house”, I promised. “Meanwhile I shall return to my hotel in Linlithgow and set everything up. I shall ride out and see you once it is all done.”

They both thanked me and I set off back to the town, hoping that I could arrange things quickly enough to prevent the young fellow's awful mother from ruining things. Perhaps she might have some extra troubles this week, just to keep her busy…..

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Miss St. Leger worked her usual magic, the Fates smiled on me as regarding the one thing I needed to happen that not even I could control, and only five days later I was able to ride out to Blackness and give the Hoods the good news. Very good; reading about the unpleasant Mrs. Harriet Hood had made my blood boil and she would be regretting having come to my attention very soon.

Although it was ten o' clock in the morning Mr. Walter Hood was still in his pyjamas and dressing-gown, which surprised me somewhat.

“Is Mr. Joseph not up as well?” I asked.

My question was answered by the man in question entering the room. He was similarly attired to his friend. For a black man he could blush very deeply.

“It is not what you think!” Mr. Walter Hood said quickly.

“I am not thinking anything just now”, I said cheerfully.

“Joe has this thing”, his friend smiled. “I could not believe it when grandfather first told me, and I think it was one of the reasons my mother hated him once he became my responsibility.”

“Don't tell him, Wally!” his friend protested, sitting down next to his friend on the couch.

“He loves to cuddle!” the young man chuckled. “Fully clothed or like this; he just enjoys the contact.”

“I don't cuddle!” the tall man protested, with the sort of indignation that reminded me of my Watson when he too got caught out doing something that he considered unmanly. “I don't!”

I quirked an eyebrow at where he had abstractedly pulled his younger companion in to him,. He blushed but did not release his hold.

“I have brought you identity documents for the two gentlemen you are now”, I said. “A Mr. Wallace Capon and his friend Mr. Josiah Hatton.”

They both chuckled at the slight name change. Then I showed them the article.

“What is this?” the younger man asked.

“An article reporting the loss off the Sussex coast of the whaler the 'Rainbow' last week”, I said. “Sadly a true event, but I have added two names to the list of the dead, two men who had paid for a passage to Russia near where she had been plying her trade. A Mr. Joseph Hood and Mr. Walter Hood, who had travelled down to meet her at Falmouth, in the apparent hopes of shaking off some ghastly pursuer. There were no survivors and it was an American ship, so your mother will believe that you died trying to evade her clutches.”

“She will probably be very happy”, the younger man said bitterly.

“If she is, it will not last”, I smiled. “By some terrible mischance the family lawyers have discovered that she secreted away a large piece of the family estate during her marriage, and have initiated proceedings to recover it. It will take time as all legal matters do, but eventually she will be ruined.”

“Sad”, the new Mr. Hatton muttered.

He could be almost as insincere as my Watson.

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Postscriptum: The two gentlemen were able to live out their lives in comfort on the Galvidian coast as I also secured an arrangement with Mr. Walter Hood's brother William, who inherited the estate after their mother was indeed ruined and eventually fled the country, to pay them a generous allowance for the rest of their lives. A happy ending all round, at least for those who deserved it.

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	11. Case 87: The Deceiving Of Dollar Bill ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. A small Clackmannanshire village is threatened when a greedy entrepreneur sees a chance for a fast buck - but the loud and obnoxious 'Dollar Bill' has reckoned without a certain consulting detective.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

It was one of those statistical curiosities which my friend Watson remarked upon in later years that while my investigations covered all sorts of areas of interest, it was not unknown for those of a similar theme to occur close together. For example we would have a ‘run’ of cases concerning his current base in Egypt towards the end of 'Ninety-Eight, although the potentially explosive political situation around that time was partly responsible for that. So fresh from one matter in which I had been able to use the power of the press towards noble ends (yes, for once), I came across another where one of the more unpleasant men – I cannot and will not say 'gentlemen' – who I successfully gulled into backing away from a particularly unpleasant act that would have hurt many people. And indeed into leaving the country, which was infinitely better for his absence.

This was also another case like several during this time in which I instigated matters rather than being asked to help by anyone. Each time it happened I could not but think that the old, pre-Watson Mr. Sherlock Holmes would never have wasted his precious time on such fripperies. The friendship of a man now a thousand miles removed from me had made me a better man, and I so looked forward to having him back in my life again. Which I would. Soon.

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Having sorted matters with my two 'renamed' friends in Linlithgowshire, I left Blackness and headed back via Linlithgow and Larbert before continuing on to Stirling, an amenable town which was perhaps a little too proud of its history. Nevertheless I enjoyed a week there and April had turned to May before I resumed my travels.

I was now moving onto the Fife Peninsula at the far end of which lay the village of Musgrave, the scene of my Tay Bridge adventure with Watson some – had it really been full six years ago? There was nothing there for me now; my friend Ceawlin Musgrave had departed for South Africa where he maintained contact with me and I knew that he was doing well, while his estates were prospering under his brother Cynric who had sold ‘The Hard Place’ and had married Miss Monica MacLeish, the seer who had foreseen the collapse of the bridge that had brought a dramatic end to our adventure there. They had decamped to the much warmer climes of the Cotswolds where they now had two children; she had come to London before the birth of the first only days before Watson and I...... that, and I had wondered if she had said something to him. He had mentioned her visit and had seemed oddly distracted; had I not had my own concerns at the time I would and probably should have taken more notice.

I had been a poor human being and a poorer friend to him. I would do better in future.

Although most of the fertile peninsula is taken up with the county of Fifeshire itself there are two small counties between that and Stirlingshire, including my first port of call and Scotland's smallest county, Clackmannanshire, which is slightly smaller than the District of Columbia in the United States (Watson loves details like that). I did not think a great deal of the town of Alloa which could in my opinion have made more of its pleasant situation on the Forth, but the county town Clackmannan itself was rather better, a small place that was well-kempt and where even this early in the season there were some visitors using it as a base to walk the nearby hills.

Hill-walking (which as I have mentioned before I considered one of the rather odd Victorian pastimes) was clearly a feature of this small county, and I made two more stops before leaving it both of which places were clearly doing their best to take advantage of that interest. The village of Tillicoultry was pleasant and quiet, but at Dollar right on the eastern border of the county I would run into my next adventure. The curious name reminded me that I have always had a regard for our American cousins across the Pond (certain denizens of Chicago, Illinois apart that was!), and often regretted the foolishness of King George the Third for his forcing them into first rebellion and then independence by his sheer arrogance and stupidity. Of course I doubted that there would be any Americans in so remote a locality as this.

Because I know that Watson will enjoy me saying it, I could not have been more wrong (I can almost see his faked shock, the bastard!). I checked in to a small hotel there and since it was almost midday I decided to go and seek out a café or restaurant in the town. I do not know why Mr. Banks the hotel owner smiled when he recommended the Flower Café 'because they do good bacon'; it was not as if I lived for that alone.

There was coffee too!

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Fortunately the Flower Café did both and of a good quality. I was enjoying my meal when the door burst open and a large fellow entered, having to actually turn slightly to get his huge bulk through the door. He was about fifty years of age, beefy tending to corpulent and, incongruously, wore a Stetson along with at least six times more jewellery than any right-thinking man should have allowed on their person. I wondered if he might be of American extraction.....

“An all-day breakfast, woman!” he bellowed at the waitress, as if she had been standing back in Tillicoultry rather than right in front of him (she might well have heard him either way). “Now!”

All right, the accent and the fact that my ears were still ringing suggested that, just possibly, he might indeed be from across the Pond. I noted also how the waitress scurried away looking almost afraid, and wondered why. The fellow took out a newspaper and spread himself over a table set for four; I also caught several of the other customers looking decidedly uneasy at his appearance.

This warranted looking at.

I finished my meal and left, noting as I did that the newcomer was tutting at having to actually wait for his food to be cooked. I went on to the library and sought out the librarian there, a tired-looking middle-aged fellow called Mr. Albert MacKay.

“You ran into Dollar Bill”, he told me. “Most people do, unfortunately. One of the worst things to happen to the village, and we're all but stuck with him.”

I wondered at his phraseology.

“Why do you say 'all but'?” I asked.

“He is buying the rights to properties around the south side of town these past two years”, he told me. “There's a hamlet just south of the station – officially it's called Little Dollar but everyone round these parts calls it The Dime – and he wants to buy it up so he can create an open mine there. There's some mineral along the banks of the river that is very rare, and if he can get enough people to agree to sell him their properties then he can knock them all down. It's ruining the town.”

“I suppose that sort of thing would”, I agreed.

“It's not just that”, he said. “In summer the railway brings in a lot of visitors wanting to use us as a base for walking the hills. Who’s going to want to have a holiday right next to a great big mine?”

I could see his point. I thought for a moment.

“How has an American ended up somewhere as remote as here, do you know?”

“He has a company back in the United States that collects reports on minerals and stuff”, Mr. MacKay said. “They must have got wind of all this and told him he could make a packet; buying up all those rights cannot have been cheap. The damnable thing is that Mr. Ferguson, the laird in these parts, was thinking of developing a mine on a smaller scale before the Big Noise blew into town.”

“Hence your Mr. - what is his name?” I asked.

“Mr. William Auburn, but everyone calls him Dollar Bill”, he said. _“Among other things!”_ He’s making damn sure that the place lives down to its name.”

“You mean the American connection”, I said.

“Actually no”, he said. “There are different versions, but the commonest one is that the name of the town comes from the French word _doleur_ meaning sadness, as in the word dolorous. He's making us sad all right!”

 _For now he is_ , I thought. But give me time....

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Next I went to the post-office where the young lady behind the counter gave me the sort of look that would have had a certain doctor rolling his eyes, but confirmed to me that Mr. Auburn received regular weekly telegrams from his business in the United States as well as the occasional letter (I would not have put it past her to have steamed those open; she looked the sort!). I then dispatched my own letter to London while I proceeded to make inquiries about the laird Mr. Ferguson. The general opinion was that he was an amiable idiot whose good lady wife controlled him one hundred and ten per cent, but that they were both tolerable enough 'for outsiders' (they came from south of the Forth). Certainly far better (and far quieter!) than some visitor I could mention.

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I was not surprised when some two days into my stay I was confronted by Mr. Auburn in the Flower Café. He looked visibly annoyed.

“You're the detective guy!” he snapped.

I was annoyed at his rudeness, not least because I was in the middle of a most enjoyable plate of bacon (not, as some snarky medical personage would have remarked, 'bacon-again'; it was not as if I was taking all my meals here. The hotel provided breakfast with more than tolerable bacon, although their coffee definitely needed work.

I finished my rasher before answering, which delay clearly annoyed him.

“I am, sir”, I said politely, cutting up my next rasher. “May I be of assistance? I know several establishments in London and even one in Edinburgh where they teach people better manners.”

I had achieved almost a Watson-esque level of snark there. I caught the waitress making a face as she fought to hold in a laugh. Fortunately the loudmouth had his back to her.

“Why're you here?” he demanded brusquely.

I finished my rasher before answering. That annoyed him even more.

“A relation of mine owns a company which specializes in geological reports”, I said. “They had some concerns over.... I cannot divulge the details as they are confidential, but I was asked to visit the Devon Valley as I was the nearest gentleman they had to the area, and to send them certain samples.”

He narrowed his eyes at me.

“That challonite is _mine!”_ he said petulantly.

“And you are most welcome to it!” I smiled.

That clearly unnerved him, as he tried to work out why I would have said that. I finished my bacon and after what seemed like an eternity while his small brain tried and failed to grasp what was happening, he thankfully left.

Apparently there was a spare plate of bacon in the kitchen that day, which the waitress most generously brought out to me. How very fortunate!

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A week later I was back in the café, _not_ for the fifteenth time as someone might well have snarked (it was only the fourteenth). Mr. MacKay the librarian was sitting at the table next to me, and smiled at me as I sat down.

“An amazing thing, Mr. Holmes”, he said. “Dollar Bill has signed over all his rights to Mr. Ferguson, and had left for London prior to returning to the United States!”

“I am sure that the whole town will mourn his departure”, I said wryly. 

He looked at me as if I were quite mad!

“I have no idea why he went”, he said, “but like everyone I am just glad that he is gone.”

“I can help you there”, I said. “There was a report in the 'Times' a few days ago concerning the discovery of a large challonite deposit in the newly-established Bechuanaland Protectorate†.”

He looked at me in confusion.

“But why would that make the fellow leave Scotland?” he asked.

“Challonite, like gold, is so valuable because of its rarity”, I explained. “The old yet inalienable rules of supply and demand; the deposit found here was the third largest in the world but the sudden discovery of an even larger vein – apparently it is almost equivalent to what we know exists in the whole world – I am sure that you can see what would happen. Doubling the supply would halve the price overnight. It would no longer have been in Mr. Auburn's interests to have developed this deposit.”

His face fell.

“So the villain has sold Mr. Ferguson a pup!” he sighed.

_(Watson later advised me to explain that this now rare expression along with the similarly derived 'to buy a pig in a poke'. Both meant to sell someone something under false pretences, from when someone would buy a bag (or 'poke') said to contain a pig, only to open it once they had paid to find a puppy. Anyone dumb enough to buy something sight unseen like that deserved the pup!)_

“He might well have done”, I agreed, “had the report in the 'Times' actually have been correct. However tomorrow's edition will carry a correction, although doubtless it will be a solitary paragraph on page twenty-nine below the advertisements and positions wanted. It was apparently something called chalcopyrite that was found in Africa, not challonite. I am afraid that Mr. Auburn sold his interests in haste, thinking that the news had not yet reached Mr. Ferguson, and when the truth catches up with him he will have plenty of leisure in which to repent.”

He chuckled at that and went back to his meal. I smiled to myself; these good people might never know what I had done for them but that was fine; I had made a whole lot of people happy and Watson would have been proud of me.

The waitress brought me my meal, but to my surprise instead of the expected all-day breakfast it was a pile of bacon upon bacon. She smiled at me as she handed it over.

 _“Fibber!”_ she muttered, before sailing away.

As I said, do not underestimate people.

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_Notes:_   
_† Over twice the size of the British Isles and roughly equivalent in area to the American state of Texas, the Protectorate had been established after attempts to establish a third Boer state called Stellaland in the area. It became independent as Botswana in 1966. The adjoining but much smaller British Bechuanaland, the area around Mafeking, was annexed to South Africa in 1895._

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	12. Case 88: The Adventure Of The Shaven Swimmer ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. An annual swimming race seems an unlikely setting for Holmes's talents. But when it comes to families - and in particular, brothers - who better to sort the wheat from the chaff?

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

I left behind a very happy (and definitely not dolorous!) small town in eastern Clackmannanshire and continued on into neighbouring Kinross-shire. Yet again I was motivated by something Watson had once said concerning his interest in the disastrous Mary Queen of Scots, for she had had a castle in Dollar one time and near the county town of Kinross ahead of me was Loch Leven, where she had been imprisoned on an island before making her final and ill-fated attempt to regain power. I sent him a postcard immediately upon my arrival, not knowing that I was about to plunge – quite literally plunge – into my next adventure.

It turned out that the loch adjoined onto the town and that the island with its castle lay in the grounds of the unoriginally named 'Kinross House'. I was surprised when looking at a map in the post-office to see that the island was barely half a mile from the house grounds and the shore; I had thought for some reason that it might be more centrally positioned to prevent the errant queen’s escape. I enjoyed the rest of the week in the town, and was considering moving into Fifeshire when I encountered the client who would bring me my next case. 

He was.... short.

“Good day Mr. Holmes”, the fellow said, hoisting himself up onto the bench I was sitting on. He was a dwarf, fair-haired and with a small birthmark on his cheek. About twenty to twenty-five years of age, there was a wary look about him as if he was sizing (hah!) me up in some way.

“Good day”, I said politely. “You are...?”

“Mr. Alexander St. Vincent”, he said. “My father owns the bakery in town. I would like to ask for your help, if I may.”

“Go ahead”, I said.

“You have likely observed the bunting being put out for the Spring Fayre this Sunday”, he said. “Every year there is a swimming race from the pier in the House grounds around the island and back. My younger brothers all take part and it is that which concerns me.”

“How so?” I asked.

“Abraham and Ambrose are twins, some twenty years of age”, he said. “This will be their last year; no-one over twenty-one is allowed to enter. One or other of them had won the race for four years in a row, but last year they were beaten by our youngest brother, Andrew, who is sixteen. As I am sure you can work out he is even more physically developed this year, so _should_ beat them again.”

I looked at him shrewdly. That 'should' had not rung true.

“You believe that your brothers may indulge in some sharp practice against Master Andrew?” I asked.

“I am very much afraid that they might”, he said. “You see, the racers have to swim to the small cove at the far side of the island where a number of pennants will be waiting for them; they have to take one and swim back to the mainland. I have a feeling that something may happen, although I do not know what.”

I just looked at him. He lasted almost a minute before he cracked.

“Your Doctor Watson is right in those stories of his when he says how annoying that is”, he sighed. “There is something, or rather someone else. Mr. Adam Carpenter who runs the gymnasium in town. It is rumoured that he and Andrew are close.”

“Is there not something of an age difference?” I wondered. He shook his head.

“Adam inherited the gymnasium from his father last year”, he said. The latter was only waiting until his son reached twenty-one; he wished to emigrate to Newfoundland for some reason. Adam is I think a good fellow and I am sure..... well as you can imagine I do not wish to think about any more than you would if it were one of your own brothers. I do know however – because Andrew will not shut up complaining about it - that Mr. Carpenter has refused to... you know, until my brother is eighteen, so at least there is that.”

I shuddered. He was so right about that, especially Luke who kept trying to tell me what he and Benji were up to and worse, dropping innuendos as to how 'hard' things were for him just now. The bastard was well on his way to another quadruple session and some extra supplies for his lover that would wipe the smile off his face, if only because he would not have the energy to make one. I might also pay for Balin and Balan to ‘help’, and try to finish him off once and for all!

I diverted myself away from some Very Happy Thoughts about a soon to be ex-cousin.

“Have both Mr. Ambrose and Mr. Abraham entered the race this year?” I asked.

“Yes”, he said, clearly surprised at my question. “Why would they not have?”

“I have an idea”, I said. “But it rather depends on what happens between now and the race. If there are any developments please come and see me at the Royal Hotel as soon as you can. I am in Room Twelve.”

He nodded, thanked me for my help and left.

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It was probably unfair of me to always think the worst of people. My only consolation was that I was so often right. My client came to the hotel the very next day and gave me a most suspicious look.

“How did you know?” he demanded. “Ambrose sprained his ankle last night and our father had to patch him up.”

“Your father?” I asked. “He did not call in the local doctor?”

He snorted at that.

“Doctor Carpenter is Adam's uncle”, he said. “This is but a small town, sir. I doubt there would have been much sympathy for my brother, although he does not deserve much for the brute that he is.”

“I saw both your brothers yesterday afternoon, swimming in the loch”, I said. “I am inclined to concur with your assessment of them; they are neither of them shining beacons of Mankind. You did not mention that your brother Abraham has shaved himself all over.”

He looked surprised at that.

“He thinks that it makes him faster through the water”, he said. “I doubt that it makes much difference myself.”

“Do you know when he started doing that?” I asked.

“I believe it was just after he was beaten last year”, he said. “He must have known that Andrew would only get faster twelve months on so I suppose that he was looking for any advantage, however small. All the girls laughed at him when he did it, but none of them like him anyway so that is all right.”

I said nothing, but thought that that was just the sort of remark that a totally non-catty medical friend of mine would have made. He would then have rolled his eyes when I looked at him for so doing, which would have been so... him.

I was still missing him. A lot.

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The day of the race dawned dank and overcast, a steady drizzle coming down from the persistent grey clouds overhead. Even the hardy young boys who made their ways down to the pier had towels wrapped around them. I had looked at the course that they had to swim and noted that there was one thing that my client had omitted in his description. The competitors had to first swim all the way out to a tiny island off the one on which the castle was situated, then almost double back to reach the cove on the far side of the main island. There were two boats holding station between these first two islands, presumably to both stop boys from cutting the corner and to rescue any who got into trouble. After collecting their pennant the swimmers then had a choice; they could return around the south side of the island or take the route along the northern coast, which was slightly shorter but I noted had several rocks.

Mr. Alexander St. Vincent was clearly annoyed that I had not told him of my plans, but considering that his family was involved I had not wished to run the risk of his brothers being alerted to my interest in this matter. I was sure that he would not have talked but there were always eavesdropping servants, for whom gossip was I knew a valuable currency. He had pointed out his youngest brother to me although I could have spotted him anyway; his would-be lover Mr. Carpenter very formally shook hands with him while trying to keep his distance, in a way that made the connection between him and the red-headed boy far too obvious. 

The race began and the boys all ploughed into the water. Soon Master Andrew St. Vincent began to pull out in front, and by the time they disappeared from view he had a lead of about ten yards on his closest pursuer.

“He is going to win, I think”, my client said from beside me, “although Abraham is closer than I had expected. But he has surely tired himself out by now while Andrew is excellent at pacing himself”

“Watch”, I said.

After some minutes a distant figure appeared swimming into the gap between the two islands. The red hair of Master Andrew St. Vincent was clearly visible even at this great distance. But moments later a second figure appeared around the northern tip of the castle island, much nearer to us and swimming fast. Mr. Alexander pulled up his binoculars and gasped.

 _”Abraham?_ I do not believe it!”

The second swimmer had a lead of over fifty yards on Mr. Andrew. The latter must surely have heard all the shouting because he put on an impressive burst of speed to close more than half that gap, but it was his shaven brother who staggered out onto the pier, gasping for breath. His father hurried up and waved away the officials, escorting his breathless son away to recover. Mr. Alexander looked at me in shock.

“Well!”

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Since the rain was now coming down even harder and the race winner was still recovering, it was decided to hold the ceremony the following morning. I went across to the mayor Mr. Aubrey Roland who was in charge of proceedings, and Mr. Alexander followed me.

“That was most unexpected”, the mayor said. “But I am sure that Mr. Abraham will enjoy receiving his medal tomorrow.”

“You are aware that he cheated?” I asked blithely.

He stared at me in shock.

“That is a most serious allegation, sir”, he said, frowning. “I do hope that you have some means of proving it.”

“If you are prepared to spend a little time this evening seeing the proof with your own eyes”, I said, “then yes. Some very solid proof indeed!”

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It was about four hours later, and dark had fallen on the town. Half an hour ago I had received the tip-off from the boys that I had left to monitor the situation, and a still dubious mayor had accompanied me and Mr. Alexander back to the pier. It was all deserted now, and most fortunately there was a small pagoda with a bench in it where we could sit and wait. 

“You said that you had proof, sir”, the mayor said, clearly still unsure about my allegations. “I do not see it.”

I pointed out to the loch where a boat could be seen making its way towards us. The sole figure in it was outlined against the distant shore; we were in darkness with the moon behind us so there was no way that they could have seen us even if they had turned round.

“I am not a betting man”, I said, “nor am I possessed of exceptional eyesight. But I will wager a penny to a pound that when that boat reaches the shore, the man who will emerge will be Mr. Ambrose St. Vincent.”

“My brother?” Mr. Alexander asked. “But he is back at the house with our father, recovering from his sprained ankle. Or so my father said.”

“I am afraid that your father was a key player in this deception”, I said in a low voice as the boat drew nearer. “Here he comes.”

The boat pulled alongside the pier and the figure in it leaped out to tie her up. It was indeed none other than Mr. Ambrose St. Vincent, who as the three of us emerged could not have looked more guilty.

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“How was it done?” Mr. Alexander asked.

We had escorted the villain back to the town, and deposited him with his equally villainous father and brother. None of them had technically committed a crime but they could be certain of social exclusion for many a year after this ramp.

“This whole thing was decided upon after your youngest brother's victory in last year's race”, I said. “Several things told me that, in particular the decision of Mr. Abraham to start shaving his body-hair.”

“How was that important?” the mayor asked. He had most generously invited us to a bacon supper, and I even forgave my small friend for rolling his eyes at me when I had arguably taken more than a few rashers onto my plate.

Look, it was only nine! Not even double figures!

“The key element of the deception was that Mr. Abraham and Mr. Ambrose were physically similar apart from two things”, I said. “Namely their body-hair and the way that they styled the hair on their heads. Yesterday Mr. Ambrose faked an injury to his leg so that he seemingly could not compete in this year's race – that, incidentally, was why the doctor was not summonsed – and he then went off somewhere to get a haircut so he would resemble his brother perfectly.”

My client drew a sharp breath. He had got it.

“Yes”, I said. “On the night before the race Mr. Ambrose shaves off all his body-hair so that he is identical to his brother. Abraham, who takes a boat out to the island carrying with him an identical swimsuit to that of his twin. The next day it is Mr. Ambrose who will make his way down to start the race; they were fortunate that the bad weather helped in ensuring that no-one noticed the switch.”

“A key fact is that in a race like this, the competitors must pace themselves. It is no good sprinting in the first half of the race if one cannot move in the second half. Mr. Ambrose knew that he only had to swim half the race, so he could go all out and pretty much keep pace with the tiresome younger brother who so cruelly beat him and his brother the previous year; that was why he was still so close to him at the half-way mark. He leaves the island and takes the northern route back, knowing that as his rival is on the southern route he will soon be around the headland and on his own.”

“It is Mr. Ambrose who swims round the north-eastern corner of the island, and his twin is watching him from, the trees along the island’s northern coast. Once he sees him Mr. Abraham takes to the water, having ‘gained’ a couple of hundred yards on his rival and has an easy victory. Mr. Ambrose meanwhile goes ashore and waits for darkness to fall, when he will slip back to town and share in his twin’s triumph.”

“Shocking!” the mayor said. I presumed he was referring to the cheating brothers rather than the small, almost minuscule amount of bacon on my plate which my dwarfish client really had not needed to have been looking pointedly at when he had said that.

“Indeed”, I said, moving to protect my prize. “Even so, the effort of the swim nearly broke Abraham St. Vincent otherwise his father would have surely agreed to have the ceremony today rather than tomorrow. A most ingenious scheme, if an evil one.”

“How did you get on to them?” Mr. Alexander asked curiously.

“I have brothers of my own”, I said sourly. “Far too many of them. _I just know!”_

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Postscriptum: Mr. St. Vincent and his two cheating sons sadly did not improve with time. Upon the father's death some six years later the twins tried to use the law to debar Mr. Alexander from inheriting the estate (which fortunately was in trust otherwise the father could easily have willed it to them), but fortunately I had left the fellow my card in anticipation of such a move and it was made clear to them that they would fail. A settlement was agreed and the two departed for somewhere in South America, I neither knew nor cared where. Nor I suspected did most of the people of Kinross. 

Mr. Andrew St. Vincent and his lover Mr. Adam Carpenter left the area for the United States once things were settled, and did very well for themselves.

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	13. Case 89: The Adventure Of Flora Macdonald ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. A famous name from history, but it is a request from someone in distant London which takes Holmes into the cut-throat world of tartan trews and the debate about 'real' Scottishness.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

For nearly the whole of June it had felt like I had almost left London behind me, and that my only connection to the outside world was my letters and telegrams to and from Watson. I still had the nagging feeling that there was something bothering him although he never said as much; I might have asked Miss St. Leger to look into the matter but Luke had warned me that Swordland's was currently deep into in a major matter for the government so I held back. I had used her offices rather too much of late anyway, although I was sure that she had appreciated all those jam cream fingers!.

My bastard of a cousin had also mentioned that Benji was deep into him! Someone was on their way to another quadruple session again - _with supplies!_

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I left Kinross and turned south, intending to work my way to and then around the Fifeshire coast. Neither Cowdenbeath nor Dunfermline were much to write home about (and that was putting it kindly!), and I reached the coast at Inverkeithing where work was progressing on the new railway bridge across to Edinburgh. This had originally been intended to have been built by the late Sir Thomas Bouch, but the failure of his Tay Bridge had led to the work being abandoned and a brand-new design being used. It would in fact be another five years before the first trains crossed, but better safe than sorry.

Despite the places looking much of a muchness on the map the coastal settlements proved to be very different, in particular frankly depressing places like Burntisland and Kirkcaldy whose closeness to Edinburgh across the wide Forth had not saved them from becoming a duller and even greyer version of the capital. It was only once I had rounded Largo Bay and had reached the eastern side of the county that matters improved; the smaller fishing villages out here like St. Monance, Anstruther and Crail may not have had much in the way of shops and the like but they were far more pleasant to spend time in. 

I had reached the famous town of St. Andrew's, and had been there three days before the letter reached me. It was from London, and I quirked an eyebrow when I recognized the elegant handwriting of my friend Gregson (he had a very distinctive letter 'K'). He could have gotten my location off either Carl or Luke, but why was he writing to me? I hoped desperately that whatever it was, it would not require a return to London. Fretfully I opened the letter:

_'Dear Mr. Holmes'_   
_I am right sorry to be bothering you sir, but I wonder if you might do a small favour for someone we both know. It is up in where you are now, or at least not far away. It is also a bit strange, but then the things that you get up to usually are.'_

That was true, I conceded.

_'It is about my superior, Inspector Macdonald.'_

Never mind quirking an eyebrow, they nearly shot off my forehead! I knew that one of the very few things that Gregson and his deadly rival LeStrade had in common was that they both respected (if not feared) the scowling misery that was their superior, and it was perhaps good in one way that while other inspectors might have held LeStrade's commonness against him or resented Gregson for having noble connections when they had none, Inspector Macdonald loathed all Mankind equally and would do neither. I had sometimes wondered why that was but I had more than enough work on my plate without adding to it.

(I really should have done, given what transpired not long after.)

_'As you may know the old misery's father died seven years back, and he was definitely not missed. He left his poor widow a pile of debts and it was fortunate that one of her brothers was a lawyer so could help her get through it all. Well, this week she found another box of her late husband's things in the attic – and among the papers there was a mention of an illegitimate daughter, born back in 'Fifty-Six!'_

I winced. Ouch!

_'Given what everyone in the force knows – they are a police family so as you can guess there are no secrets – I suppose that no-one should have been surprised. The late Mr. John Macdonald was not in the service himself but his two brothers were; one of them got the old man his place in London. Many years before he was due to have qualified for it, and it says something for how well he has done that none in the Service resented him for his rapid rise, which as I am sure someone like you knows is all but unknown! I went to that Miss St. Leger friend of yours – she fair creeps me out; I am sure that she could have had me for breakfast if she had wanted! - but she made some inquiries for me and told me that this daughter is living in the town of Perth and working at a shop in town called 'Tartan Trews'. I know that it would give the fellow some peace of mind if you found her and could send word to say that she is all right. His mother is I think the only person he loves in this world and I know that making her easy would make him a bit less miserable. Perhaps.'_

I smiled at that. Gregson was a good fellow beneath the polished exterior, having that core of common decency that good policemen needed when dealing with so much of the evil in this world. I went to wire back that I would indeed seek out this Miss Macdonald and that I would send to him once I had found out what was needed, and also to the inspector by letter.

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Since there was no particular urgency in my friend’s request I took my time working my way back to Perth, which I had to go through anyway as the replacement Tay Bridge was then still under construction. I went via Newport-on-Tay to take a look at it and judged it rather more solid that its ill-starred predecessor, whose fall had provided such a fateful end to the Musgrave Case some six years back. I called in at both Cupar and Newburgh before rounding the Firth of Tay and entering Perth.

The home of the inspector’s half-sister was to prove that rare thing, a fair-sized Scottish town that I actually liked, and I found rooms at the Royal George overlooking the River Tay. It was late when I arrived so I waited until the following day to start seeking out Miss Macdonald. I suppose that I could have dashed round to the shops which were just starting to close, but there was a bacon option for dinner (possibly that may have been a very small contributory factor to my having chosen this hotel) so I decided to wait until the next day.

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More than almost any other place I had seen in Scotland apart from the capital, Perth brought home to me just how much the tourist industry was to this part of Great Britain. Shops selling kilts, Scottish foodstuffs and all sorts of nick-knacks predominated in this town, and 'Tartan Trews' was one such. It was quite a large establishment, twice the size of the shops around it having clearly subsumed one of the neighbouring establishments at some time in the past, and it looked both well-presented and clean. I wondered what this Miss Flora Macdonald might be like; I knew as I have mentioned before that the inspector's elder brother Andrew very much took after their noble ancestor James Graham, Marquis of Montrose. His scowling brother got his huge size and great musculature from his paternal grandfather Mr. Mark Macdonald; both Gregson and LeStrade had admitted that they had been surprised that their superior's brother looked nothing like him. At least it had provided each of them with a further excuse to call round on a baking-day!

By the by, before anyone comments on how cynical I was becoming, Miss St. Leger had informed me that both my policemen friends called in at my new address in Baker Street from time to time ‘to check up on things’. And amazingly, always on one of Mrs Hudson’s baking days! 

There was a lady behind the counter talking to a customer, and she reminded me of a picture that I had seen of the famous woman who bore the same name as my quarry (I had wondered if the pictures of that brave lady who had helped Bonnie Prince Charlie to escape had been based more on myth than reality but Watson had assured me that they were not). This rather small lady seemed to be having some difficulty with a truculent customer, a weedy but belligerent fellow of about thirty years of age with what looked, incredibly like ginger hair that he had tried to dye blond. How strange.

I was still ruminating on this when my thoughts were interrupted.

_“You again!”_

The three of us all turned to where a lady had emerged from what was presumably the back area. I gulped; there could be no doubt that this was _the_ Miss Flora Macdonald as she was a female mirror image of her half-brother, including both the height and the muscles. The weedy gentleman at the counter yelped in fear and managed an impressive sprint to the door whence he fled. The Amazon rolled her eyes and was about to return whence she had come when.....

Lord above, she was simpering at me! This was so bad!

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I do not think that I have ever been more terrified, yet I was incapable of fleeing as I so desperately wanted to do from the hungry looks I was receiving as the Amazon poured out coffee for us both. At least it was coffee; I needed the caffeine (I needed something stronger if truth be told but that was not to hand just now)!

I explained the purpose of my seeking her out and, to my surprise, she did not see them least bit perturbed by my news.

“Oh, I knew about my useless lump of a father”, she said airily. “He arranged for two of his servants who were retiring when I was born to raise me; for the distance I suppose, as they came from here. They were Macdonalds too in case you were wondering about the name, but no relation to him or at least only very distant cousins. He paid them a fair amount and they were instructed not to tell me about _Matters_ as they called them; the usual Victorian Arrangement. When he died seven years back they decided that I had better know in case I found out by chance. Luckily they knew some of the servants who still worked for that useless lump's poor wife so they were able to tell me that she was all right. Best not interfere, I thought.”

 _She had probably been right to make that call_ , I thought. And it had been good of her to have kept an eye on her father's wife.

“But it is good that you called, _sir_ ”, she said, leering at me most alarmingly. “That rat of a fellow who called in earlier is trying to drive me out of business. Maybe you can do something about him?”

“Who was he?” I asked,

“Mr. Joffrey Howe-Ovington”, she sneered. “As pompous as his name; he owns shops in Edinburgh and Stirling which do much the same as we do here. He opened a shop down the street from me but it is not doing well, and he wants to try to force me out of business.”

 _Brave man_ , I thought. _Stupid and arguably suicidal, but brave._

“How might he be able to do that?” I asked.

“He is on the council”, she explained, “and he wishes to use the open area next to his shop as a carriage park and then close off the street to vehicles. That would mean everyone having to walk past his shop first, and I would lose all my passing trade.”

I thought for a moment.

“This Mr. Howe-Ovington”, I said at last. “Is there a _Mrs._ Howe-Ovington?”

She snorted in disbelief.

“No woman round here would be that desperate!” she said forcibly.

I looked at her, and had what was arguably a rather bad thought.

“Perhaps one might be”, I smiled.

She looked at me in surprise but still managed a leer as well. I was impressed.

All right, _and_ terrified! This was once case that I needed to solve damn quickly!

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I was quite surprised that it took Mr. Howe-Ovington two whole days to track me down. But then I had been deliberately avoiding him knowing that the longer things went on, the more his panic would evolve into outright and unbridled terror. Like mine had; a trouble shared is someone else's problem.

“You are a detective, Mr. Holmes!” he said as he finally cornered me in the hotel restaurant.

“I am, sir”, I said coolly. “You speak as though that were some sort of crime?”

He shook his head. He was sweating, I noticed, and kept glancing fearfully over his shoulder. I hoped (perhaps surprisingly) that his fears would not come to reality just yet; I wished him to say what he had to say first.

“You have to help me!” he insisted. “This is a crime against Mankind!”

I feigned astonishment.

“Are we talking murder, sir?” I asked,

“Worse!” he shuddered. _“Marriage!”_

I looked bewilderedly at him. Out of the corner of my eye I caught a familiar figure lurking just beyond the doorway.

“What is so bad about marriage?” I asked in mock confusion. “It is not an institution that I have tried myself as yet, but I know many people who speak most highly of it.”

He shuddered delicately.

“That Miss Macdonald”, he said. _”She_ wants to marry me! I would rather die!”

“Yes, I had an idea that she might”, I said casually.

He looked at me in astonishment, and was clearly struggling for words.

 _“Why?”_ he managed at last.

“I recently brought her news of an unexpected inheritance”, I explained. “Unfortunately it is one of these conditional things; she can only lay hands on the sum – we are talking quite a large sum although I cannot be more explicit – if she is married. Also there is a time constraint as well, so she is doubtless eager to get some lucky gentleman up the aisle quite soon.”

 _“Lucky?”_ he asked, his voice accelerating past choirboy levels.

“He may be”, I said. “I am sure that she would make a good wife, provided her husband did as he was bidden. One can only hope that she does not resort to the old game of putting it about that you have indeed proposed; you know how society these days is ever more inclined to favour the lady in such circumstances. Or she might even propose to you, that is not unknown either. After all you are well-matched.”

He stared at me as if I had suddenly started speaking in tongues.

 _”How?”_ he demanded.

“You both own shops in the town”, I pointed out. “Naturally if anything were to happen to either of you after the marriage – perish the thought _of course_ \- then the survivor would inherit both establishments, or in her case your entire business. Is it not fortunate that she had you to hand when this happened?”

“Oh Joffy darling?”

I silently applauded Miss Macdonald's excellent timing as she sailed into the room and headed straight for Mr. Howe-Ovington. He looked at her, then at me, let out a high-pitched shriek of terror and fled for the far door with a speed that would have put a cheetah to shame.

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The following day the local newspaper announced that, very sadly, 'Howe-Ovington Clothing' was to shut its Perth branch and re-employ the staff at a new shop in Berwick. Its owner had already fle..... left the area. How strange.

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Miss Macdonald was delighted with what I had done for her and promised to write a letter to her half-brother the inspector for me so that his mind could be put at ease (this was to prove doubly beneficial as the latter was about to enter his own troubled times all too soon). She would also write to the inspector's mother, explaining the situation. And she insisted on taking one of my cards so that she could write to me in London. One day she might even be inclined to come and visit the English capital and look me up.

Mr. Howe-Ovington's flight suddenly looked even wiser!

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	14. Case 90: Death By Nut ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. A tiny Forfarshire village that no-one has ever heard of, yet would acquire brief fame just a few short years on, is the setting for something a little different from most of Holmes's cases without Watson – a mysterious death! And the killer can never be brought to justice – although they may one day be brought to the dinner-table!

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

Foreword: The name 'Kinnaber' is unknown to people these days (1936) as it has returned to being a sleepy little hamlet in the north-eastern corner of the county of Forfarshire, or Angus as it is now called. But in the decade after this case it experienced a brief burst of fame during the 'Races To The North' when the rival groups of railway companies who operated the East and West Coast routes between London and Aberdeen strove to outdo each other and put on ever faster trains (they were not actually _racing,_ perish the thought!). Following the opening of the new Forth and Tay Bridges. The East Coast companies had their own route as far as Kinnaber Junction, a mile west of the hamlet, whence they had running powers over the rival West Coast (Caledonian Railway) line to the Granite City, so the first train to be signalled to the junction signal-box was the 'winner' of this definitely not a race. Therefore in 1895 this sleepy place became known to many newspaper readers, before anonymity returned and it was once again left alone.

But a decade before that brief fame I happened by, and there was the strange death of Mr. Hubert Green – a case that was quite literally nuts!

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I had left Perth and the terrible Miss Flora Macdonald – Lord, she had even threatened to send me a photograph of her once she could have one taken! – and after stopovers in Errol and Invergowrie I reached Dundee and had just about stopped shaking. This town at the northern end of the new Tay Bridge did not impress me much, and I moved swiftly on. Neither Broughty Ferry nor Monifieth were much better, but I liked Carnoustie and played a round of golf there (Father had allowed me to take a course of lessons one time; I had not played at St. Andrew's as I knew that Watson wanted to visit there and I hoped to get a case near or at least north of there one day). 

Next it was Arbroath which looked quite promising and, I remembered Watson once telling me, where the famous Declaration of Arbroath had been signed in the fourteenth century, re-establishing Scottish independence. The people there however proved rather unwelcoming so I again moved on. Striking inland for a while I visited Forfar, Kirriemuir and Brechin, all of which I enjoyed rather more.

My last stop in Forfarshire was Montrose, the town forever associated with Inspector Macdonald's famous noble ancestor James Graham whom he could surely not have been more unlike (coincidentally it was there that I received a thank-you note from him for my help in locating his half-sister; I had had a similar telegram from Gregson back in Dundee). I found the small port quite pleasant although its setting around a large bay made for some bracing winds, and I wondered at the brave Scotsmen who wore kilts in these conditions. I had once quite fancied donning one myself but even if my recent encounter with the kilt-selling Miss Macdonald had not deterred me, the horrific memory of my own mother dragging me around Scotland and actually having buying herself one which she still wore around the house with absolutely no warning – no young gentleman of tender years deserves to be exposed to such a horror!

All right, maybe Mycroft.

And Torver.

And Randall.

And Guilford. But no-one else! Not even my oversharing cousin Luke who had written to me bemoaning that I had had those extra ‘supplies' sent to Benji who had taken full advantage of them. Hah!

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The day after my arrival in Montrose I received a telegram from my twin Sherrinford, which was decidedly unusual. He advised me that as I was in the Marquis’s town – it was damnably annoying how he was able to track me as efficiently as Miss St. Leger, I might add – I should take care to ensure that I covered what he called ‘the Egyptian angle’. I might have wondered if that had been some sort of reference to Watson except that he went on to state that it was not. I wondered why he had not just said that my friend was fine, but supposed that he had had his reasons.

Apart from the obvious one of being yet another annoying sibling, that was!

One of the things that never ceased to surprise me was the efficiency of the gossip network in even rural parts of the Three Kingdoms, and this was reinforced when the client who was to bring me my next case found me in the town. He was a nondescript fellow of about forty years of age, dark-haired and had clearly not shaven for several days. He also looked rather drawn, as if he was under stress for some reason.

“Mr. Sherlock Holmes?” he asked, standing by the chair opposite.

Although he was very obviously a farmer of some sort (his apparel, hands and weathered expressions told me as much) he made a favourable first impression on me. Far too many potential clients seemed to believe that because of their social standing and/or their inflated sense of self-importance, I would be compelled to take their case. That was why they had all remained _potential_ clients.

“I am he, sir”, I said. “Please be seated. How may I be of service?”

“I have a dead body and a lot of nuts!”

I just stared at him, wondering if I had misheard.

“And some people think that I killed the fellow!”

Well, this was.... different.

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I insisted on ordering drinks for us before he told me his problem, and given the very slight shaking I observed in his hand I was not surprised that he went for whisky.

“My name is Mr. Henry Mornington”, he said, “and I own Border Farm in Kinnaber, just north of here. A few days before you arrived, a man was found stabbed to death in one of my fields. The police seem to think that _I_ had something to do with it!”

I thought that unlikely, though not impossible. Sadly I had been around long enough to have known some very plausible murderers.

“Please tell me everything, sir”, I said. “No detail is too unimportant. Start at the beginning.”

He took a deep breath.

“There is a footpath that cuts across my farm and leads to the river, the North Esk”, he said. “A few fishermen use it to get to the riverbank but most go to the bridge; the fishing is better there so some of them have told me. Last week a man was found stabbed to death in the field that lies east of the path. At first they thought that he had scared the cows and that they had trampled him to death – he had been run over by several of them – but when they did the examination afterwards, they found the stab wound. He had been done in with a dagger; they said it had to have been held close to him although I do not know how they worked that out.”

“Who was the victim?” I asked. 

His face clouded over for some reason.

“A local fellow, Mr. Hubert Green”, he said.

 _There was definitely something about that name_ , I thought.

“Did you know him?” I asked.

“He and his sister Hilaria were two of these... I do not know what the word is for them, sir. They were not Christian but they were not atheist either; they did their own thing and most people round here thought they were just weird!”

“Were there any fingerprints on the knife?” I asked. He shook his head.

“Only the victim's”, he said. “It may have been his own weapon or he may have tried to pull it out before he died; I have no idea. The dagger was found close to him; I know that the police did consider suicide but he had no history of anything like that and no apparent need to do anything so strange.”

“You mentioned nuts”, I said, thinking that he may have just been describing the two people that he had mentioned. “How do they come into this tale?”

“You probably will not believe it”, he said, “and when I mentioned it to the police they looked at me as if I had been drinking until I showed them the evidence. There was a whole load of nuts in the field!”

I looked at him in bewilderment. This case was leaving stranger and rapidly approaching the dangerous territory of my mother's writings! Lord help me if she ever got to hear of this!

“What sort of nuts?” I asked.

“A mix” he said. “Walnuts, hazel-nuts, Brazil nuts…. it was like one of those bags of assorted nuts you buy for Christmas. I trod on one when I checked round after they had cleared up, and I found a whole load around and about the place.”

 _A nutty murderer,_ I thought with a smile. _What a pity that Watson was not here; the eye-roll if I had said that would have been phenomenal!_

“Can you help at all, sir?” he asked hopefully.

“It is certainly one of the stranger cases that I have come across”, I said. “But I will do what I can, and if I can find anything out I will send to you at the farm.”

He thanked me for that and left. I stared after him, thinking hard.

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I decided to try the library and see if I could find something there. Perhaps there was some sort of strange cultural practice involving nuts, daggers and cows in north-east Forfarshire. _Perhaps Mother's stories had done their worst and I was finally losing my mind!_

Unfortunately I found nothing of any use and was about to give up when the young librarian approached me. 

“May I help you, sir?” he asked earnestly.

“I do not think so”, I sighed. “I was looking into nuts of all things, but it seems that nuts are just nuts.”

He looked knowingly at me. This was a small town, so I was sure that the ‘nutty’ element of this case would have been common knowledge.

“Any particular type of nut, sir?” he asked. 

“Just the usual”, I said. “Unless there is some sort of Egyptian connection to this, which someone suggested to me there might be.”

“Ah”, he said. “Nut.”

I stared at him, confused.

“Is there some type of nut of which I am unaware?” I asked. “Because I have read more about them than I ever wanted to know today!”

He smiled knowingly.

“I meant the Egyptian goddess, sir”, he said. “She was called Nut.”

I stared at him.

“The Egyptians had a goddess called _Nut?”_ I asked.

“Yes”, he said. “The goddess of the sky. She usually appeared as a nude woman covered in stars – we do not have any of that sort of thing here, I hasten to add – or sometimes as a cow.”

 _Jackpot!_ I thought, silently thanking my twin. 

I thanked the young fellow and tipped him so much that he must have seriously doubted my sanity. But I now had my first break, and if what I thought was correct – well, I had always said that Mankind had a considerable length and breadth, and it looked like this case was going to more than prove it!

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I made some inquiries into the movements of a certain person the following day, and was pleased to find that they had a job working at a local shop which would keep them away from their home for at least six hours. Since I did not have a handy burglar to hand and did not wish to disturb Miss St. Leger (who could likely have located me several in northern Forfarshire!) I had to break into their house myself, but it proved very easy and I found just what I was looking for. People in this county – well, my mother must never get to hear of this, that was for sure! 

On the other hand, I was right at the other end of the country.... yes, and I could easily arrange for Randall or Torver to drop by at just the wrong time...

A thousand miles away but 'someone' remained a bad influence on me. An influence that I really missed!

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I had planned to arrange to meet Mr. Mornington so that I could give him the good news, but early the following day I chanced to meet him coming into the town. He looked even more tired than before, which given all that he had been through this past week or so was understandable. Fortunately relief was at hand and I asked him to accompany me to the police-station (I only realized in retrospect that that might have worried him rather more).

Constable McQuarrie received us and asked what our business was.

“I have managed to work out how Mr. Hubert Green met his end”, I said. “I can tell you who was responsible for his death, or at least one of those responsible, although I must also add that you will never be able to bring a conviction.”

“Never heard of someone that we can't convict”, the policeman said. “Who was it?”

“One of Farmer Mornington's cows.”

They both stared at me as if I was quite mad. Given the absurdity of the case, I could forgive them that.

“Mr. Green and his sister had a reputation for being... different”, I said, thinking that I had just made an entry for Understatement Of The Decade there. “They believed in worshipping the Ancient Egyptian goddess of the sky, who was called Nut.”

I could see the farmer's eyes widening at that.

“Yes”, I said. “Hence the nuts that you found in the field; they were indeed apposite to the case. I also visited Miss Green's house this morning and, although I regret that some abuse of my talents was involved, gained entry and found a number of books on that faraway land. Along with a whole lot of nuts.”

 _“Except the lady herself!”_ the constable muttered. Watson would have liked him!

“What happened was that, most likely during the night, Mr. Green went to your field alone and decided to practice his worship around one of your cows”, I said. “I would hazard that part of the proceedings involved his dancing round a cow with his ceremonial dagger which, when one is dealing with a large and easily startled farmyard animal, is not perhaps the smartest of moves. The cow reacted understandably and bolted, likely followed by others nearby, and in the confusion Mr. Green was run down and the dagger driven into him. That was why there had been no fingerprints on the knife except his.”

The constable whistled through his teeth.

“It sounds mad, but it makes sense”, he said at last. “How can you be sure the sister wasn't there, sir?”

“Because she would have tried to remove the knife and her fingerprints would then have been on it too”, I said. “Had she wiped the knife to hide that fact then she would have removed his fingerprints; that there were only his shows her innocence in the matter. I also found notes in her house that stated she had been intending to carry out the same 'ceremony' on the night after her brother, but of course she did not.”

The farmer took a deep breath.

“Egyptian goddesses, daggers, nuts and nutters!” he said with a sigh. “Mr. Holmes, even your Doctor Watson could never write this one up!”

I was forced to agree, although I would of course write to Watson about having an adventure with a connection to where he was now. Hopefully he would not be for much longer.

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Postscriptum: Since I was safely several hundred miles away I did send to Mother about my Forfarshire adventure and, as sure as night follows day, she turned it into 'Sweet Nut-Things'. Which meant that Torver got rather more than a free dinner on his next visit to the house!

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	15. Interlude: Rosy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. Doctor Watson is happy. The local political situation is suddenly improved, his muse has allowed him to finish his next story of his adventures with his friend, and everything in the garden looks rosy.  
> For now.....

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

Cynic that I was, I fervently believed that when good things happened then bad things were merely waiting their turn in line, having taken a number so they could reset my happiness to a lower level as soon as possible. Holmes and my other friends always chided me for this, but in that sultry summer as matters around me looked so promising, I just knew that something bad would happen sooner rather than later.

Yes, I was a cynic. I was also correct.

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The reasons for my current happiness were twofold. Firstly the Mahdi, the mad Mohammedan ruler of the Sudan, had died the previous month and as so often after being under a strong ruler the place had fallen to factionalism, which had led to the enemy fighting each other rather than raiding into southern Egypt. Also we had enough men in the area to begin considering an advance against them, which had led to higher morale and fewer people seeking my services.

The other reason behind my good mood just now was that I had finished writing up my adventure with Holmes concerning poor Mr. William Hudson (The Adventure Of The Yellow Face) and had dispatched it to Holmes for checking before he passed it on to the 'Strand' magazine. What with my reputation in England having been fully restored following the shocking revelations about my traitorous grandfather I was now set fair to return next April, only nine months away.

I was also enjoying my letters and telegrams from Holmes, who was making his way around Scotland and undertaking a few matters for people there. He had barely spent any time in Baker Street which surprised me a little, but he promised to be back well in time for my return, which was good. Everything was going great.

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I really, _really_ should have known better.

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	16. Case 91: Rough Justice In The Mearns ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. Holmes travels through Kincardineshire and visits another town that is no more. But having no people does not mean having no crime, and the detective has to decide how to effect justice in a case where, however brutally, it has already been done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Non-graphic mention of rape.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

In his last telegram Watson had said that he had completed his work on the 'Yellow Face' story which was on its way to me and he might even start work on the 'Speckled Band' case if his muse stayed with him. I had mixed feelings about that; I was delighted that he was seemingly back to his normal self and happy, but that latter story had been the last before his departure and his mentioning it had reminded me of how ill I had behaved towards him around that time. I would make it up to him when he came back next spring.

When. Not if.

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One of the many arguments about Scotland and Scottishness is as to just where the Highlands end and the Lowlands begin. My own experience from this Caledonian tour was that in the triangle between Stirling, the Grampian Mountains and Aberdeen, which latter town I knew for many marked the 'border', there was a sort of Midlands, and the county of Kincardineshire (or to give it its alternative name, the Stewartry of the Mearns†) was part of this area. It was also an area which would bring me one of my darker cases, where justice may have been delayed but as in the Forest of Dean, it was not to be denied.

From Montrose I travelled up the long branch-line to St. Cyrus, Johnshaven and Inverbervie, small ports all of which I found quite appealing. From Johnshaven I then took a carriage across to resume the main line north at a place called Laurencekirk, which reminded me of the Repellent Philanthropist case many hundreds of miles away at the far end of Great Britain. The merry young Cornish fisherman Lowen had told me while we were conversing in his native tongue that his late mother had wished to name him Lawrence but his father had insisted on a Cornish name. It was strange that Watson, who was usually the most affable of fellows, had not taken to him at all.

Strange and, as I have said before, more than a tad unfortunate. But then there would be certain compensations, some way down the line.

There was only one railway line that passed through Kincardineshire, the Caledonian Railway's north-eastern line that ended at Aberdeen (although as mentioned in my last story, their rivals the North British Railway had running powers over it). I remembered Watson telling me some years back that when the line from the Granite City on to Forres and Inverness had been built by the rather boastfully-named Great North of Scotland Railway, so intense was the rivalry between them and the Caledonian that the former would deliberately send their trains off before passengers coming from the south could reach them, and he was sure that the reverse had happened as well. This was the price paid for independent railway companies as well as the wasteful practice of each often wanting their own station in even the smallest towns.

My hotel in Laurencekirk had a detailed map of the county including the railway line, and I wondered that the town of Kincardine wherever it was had no station. Indeed I could not even find it on the map, which went all the way down to what had to have been some quite small villages. Puzzled, I asked the hotel-owner Mrs. Bainbridge about it.

“Oh that's gone, dearie”, she smiled.

“Gone?” I asked, puzzled. “Where did it 'go'?”

“It was a few miles north of here, near Fettercairn”, she said, pointing to that place which given the scale of the map was likely about four to five miles away. “Don't know what happened to it by rights; some places just don't last.”

 _Not even if they have a whole county named after them_ , I thought, hoping that she could sort out whatever was wrong with her eye that was causing her to keep squinting at me. Just the sort of thing that Watson would have pou.... scowled over.

I decided to go and visit this 'Kincardine' and see what was there. If anything.

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The following day I hired a carriage and set off first for Fettercairn, whence I hoped I might obtain precise directions to the ‘lost’ town. I asked at the first hostelry that I came to and to my surprise the landlord's face darkened.

“What be your interest, sir?” he demanded.

“I am curious about a shire without a town”, I said, surprised at his hostility. “I thought that I might see the place so that I could write to my friend about it; he is serving as a doctor in the Army down in Egypt and he likes such things.”

He looked at me very suspiciously. I wondered what there was about this 'not a town' that had elicited such a negative reaction. He was all but glaring at me as if I had committed some unforgivable _faux pas_ , yet I had no idea what.

I asked at several other places around the village, but although the responses were not as hostile as my first had been, there was definitely something odd. Finally I went to the small library where, although the librarian was also unhelpful, I managed to find someone. An earnest-looking young fellow of about twenty years of age with round spectacles and thin dark hair approached me almost nervously.

“I heard you asking our Mr. Barnes about the town of Kincardine”, he said, sounding almost apologetic at having overheard a conversation. “I am afraid that you have come at a bad time, sir, and that name is not well received in this village.”

“May I ask why?” I said. “I am Mr. Sherlock Holmes, by the way.”

“My name is Mr. Harry Stone, an archaeologist for my sins”, he said. “I have been involved into researching into the old town, so I can easily bore most people around here until they go away.”

I smiled at his candidness, although I had noticed one thing about him that was not quite right. Like my last case this too was getting stranger and stranger. Hopefully there would be no nuts and cows this time!

 _(As things were to turn out, nuts and cows would have been infinitely more preferable)_.

“I would quite like to see the place”, I said. “I doubt that there is much there; it is only so I can write to my friend and tell him that I have been to a ‘ghost town’. His mother came from Roxburghshire you see, which I know is another shire that has lost the source of its name.”

“I do not think that there are any ghosts in Kincardine, sir”, he smiled. “But I am free today so I would be delighted to accompany you.”

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One of the skills I have developed as a consulting detective is the ability to observe people without their noticing, and I most definitely caught several of the locals in the small village eyeing us warily before very pointedly going about their business. One of them in particular who almost fell over his feet in an effort to avoid me, a large fellow indeed. I was beginning to have a feeling about this, and it was not a good feeling. It was the same one that I had had back in the Forest of Dean, with the terrible ending that had ensued from Mr. Wilson Hoxhaugh’s foul actions.

“You mentioned that this in particular was not a good time to visit Fettercairn”, I asked once we were clear of the town and rumbling along a track heading east. “Why is that?”

He sighed.

“The police are looking for Mr. Chester Sheene”, he said. “It is all rather horrible. He is alleged to have forced himself on Alice, a girl who works in the tavern by the archway. She was horribly bruised but survived, which is something.”

“Are the police certain that he was responsible?” I asked. He nodded grimly.

“He wore a mask”, he said heavily, “but she managed to tear it off in the struggle. He has not gone back to his own or his father's house for they know that both will be watched; likely he has fled the area.”

 _A curious way of phrasing things_ , I thought. _’They’ know, which implied someone was assisting or at least trying to assist this villain. And no mention of the authorities as the ones doing the watching._

“This Mr. Sheene is a local fellow?” I ventured casually.

“He lived in the cottage at the entrance to the old town”, my guide said. “I suppose you might say that he is the only resident of the place these days. We will pass it twice; it is a dead-end road these days.”

I drew an uneasy breath. This was getting worse and worse.

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It seemed a long journey to the vanished town, although I could see that since we had had to go past it and all but double back we were not actually that far from Fettercairn. There was likely a path that made the distance shorter. Useful for those walking – as in returning from the scene of a crime.

“Did you find anything of historical interest here?” I asked as we passed the cottage where (presumably) Mr. Sheene lived.

“Very little”, he said. “It prospered for such a short time you see; the county was created around it in 1531 when the town was listed as having a population about that of Fettercairn today, so big for those times. It had a castle on the mound up there and Mary Queen of Scots stayed there one time – she stayed almost everywhere, I know! - but just seventy years later the county moved its capital to Stonehaven on the coast. The first census in 1801 showed the population to be a massive eleven, and today there is only a farm on the site. And Mr. Sheene’s cottage, of course.”

There really was very little here, and I noted that the slight rise in the ground no longer afforded much of a view as it might have done due to all the trees that had grown over it since. Very useful they were, too.

“I suppose that I only have one question, then”, I said innocently.

“What is that, sir?” he asked. “I will answer it if I can.”

“Very well”, I said. _”Where did you hide the body?”_

He had played his role well but that had caught him completely off-guard. He spluttered before managing an answer.

“I... I do not know what you mean, sir!” he managed.

“Come now, sir”, I said. “I refer to the body of the late Mr. Chester Sheene, which if I spend several hours looking around here there is the strong possibility that someone of my calibre may well find. Especially if I exert myself to bring in people to help. Tell me where it is, then we will go from there.”

For some moments I thought he was going to persist in his cover-up, but he clearly knew that he had been found out. He gestured over to the castle hill.

“There is an old well”, he said. “They dropped him down there and recovered it; it takes at least three men to lift the stone.”

 _They_ , not we. At least he was telling the truth now.

“Why did you do it?” I asked. “I do not ask for the name of the fellow's killers, but why? What was so wrong with the justice system?”

He snorted disdainfully.

“The Sheenes have the police, the justices and even the local member of parliament‡ in their pockets”, he said sadly. “The police are not even pretending to look for him; we have all seen that. We all knew that even if he was handed over to them there would have been 'insufficient evidence', and the whole thing would have died a death.”

“Instead of which Mr. Sheene died a death”, I said. 

“How did you know?” he asked.

“It was all a little _too_ well-arranged”, I said. “After everyone is so hostile, a handy and friendly fellow arrives on the scene who just happens to be an archaeologist. Which you, sir, palpably are not.”

“You cannot know that”, he said with a slight smile.

“The relatively good condition of your hands gave you away”, I told him. “I am sure that after I introduced myself to the landlord and told him of my intention to visit this place, there was a frantic consultation somewhere and you were chosen as the fellow most learnéd about this place who might be able to keep me from discovering the truth. Unfortunately you also gave yourself away a second time when I tricked you in asking about the victim. You referred to him in the past tense, knowing full well that he was already dead. And your phrasing clearly suggested that he was receiving help in an effort to save him from the consequences of his foul crime.”

His face hardened defiantly.

“We will never admit it in public!” he said. “I will tell you, Mr. Holmes, that only four people know all the details. You will never break our silence, and in the time it would take you to get anyone here, the body will be long gone!”

I looked at him heavily. He paled.

“What?” he asked, trembling.

“The blacksmith's son.”

He gasped and reeled back from me.

“You forget that my years of work have given me a _full_ knowledge of human nature”, I said, “in all its bestial cruelty. That huge fellow looked more worried that most as we left and much as I might not wish to, I can well guess why. It was not enough for you to murder Mr. Sheene, was it? First you did to him what he did to poor Alice.”

He looked so white, I was afraid that he might pass out.

“But there was one thing that you and your friends failed to allow for”, I said. “That is whatever else my failings may be as a human being, I am at the end of the day a man who will always put justice before the law. This evil man raped a woman in the near-certain knowledge that there would be no repercussions. As he sits in the fires of Hell he knows now – too late – just how wrong he was.”

He looked at me incredulously.

“You.... you are not going to inform on us?” he asked.

“I think”, I said, “that if I found myself in your position, and someone I loved – or even a friend of someone I loved – had been so treated by someone that I believed would get away with it? Then yes, I would have done much the same. In an ideal world one might argue that Mr. Sheene's first punishment would have been sufficient, but a man whose family can control the justice system like that could equally hunt down and destroy those who did the same to him; it is my bitter experience that people can have a very selective definition of justice when it suits them.”

I returned to our cart and leaped up onto it.

“This place has nothing of interest to me”, I said. “Let us leave it.”

We left the ghost town with its sole inhabitant and returned to Fettercairn. Mr. Stone thanked me and saw me off back to Laurencekirk, although before I was out of sight I saw him hurrying to inform his co-conspirators. It was yet again one of my 'ragged solutions', but if anyone had done that to my.... to someone I loved, I knew that what I had told the archaeologist had been true. My vengeance would have been just as harsh and immediate, maybe even more so.

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One day, not so far into the future, it indeed would be.

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_Notes:_   
_† Another unfortunate translation, as Mearns actually meant Stewartry._   
_‡ Mr. Stone was actually wrong on this, as the local member George Balfour (b. 1809) was not informed of what had happened, but Mr. Sheene’s ‘friends’ put about that he had been and would help to protect him._

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	17. Case 92: Macduff Of Macduff As Macduff ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. In Moray and yet not in Moray, Holmes faces a challenge that most people would have considered absolutely unimaginable – an actor with too low an opinion of himself (sic). Can the great detective convince him otherwise?

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

It was one of those curious coincidences that my latest letter from my cousin Luke contained both a theatrical reference and a literary something that I read, marvelled at, and immediately forwarded to Watson. For my very next investigation just days after would also be in the world of creativity, when I would attempt to boost an actor's ego.

Much as you the reader may think it, that last sentence was not a misprint.

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Even allowing for the fact that my brothers were a mixed bag (I can _hear_ that eye-roll from someone a thousand miles away!), this latest development had surprised me. I had grown inured to Mycroft's meanness of spirit, Guilford's so-called sense of humour and Randall.... being Randall, but my third brother Torver had always been..... well, I had thought that Carl was perhaps going a bit too far when he had suggested a comparison to a fruitcake with nuts in, but given what had just happened, maybe not. Torver had his own apartment in London but he was around our parents' house most days, usually trying to scrounge free meals while avoiding Mother's stories (often unsuccessfully; I had Carl and Luke make sure of that). So when I heard that he had clambered through the skylight and was now identifying as a pigeon, I at first thought this just another tactic to avoid having to listen to 'Three's A Crowd', the one about King Neptune's trident not being his only long thing with three long...... honestly! 

Unfortunately they had managed to talk him down from the roof (Torver, not King Neptune). Why is there never a giant bird of prey around when you want one?

Luke also sent me a magazine which looked very much like the sort of tat that Watson kept in his locked bedside drawer and that I was Not Supposed To Know About. I was surprised at my cousin – for all his fine qualities he had little in the way of artistic taste, normally being far too busy having his brains fucked out by a certain Mr. Benjamin Jackson-Giles – but soon understood when I found the story that he had earmarked for me to read. 'Cockswain' by one A. Lansbury was basically a retelling of our first adventure in Oxford, with one or two very slight differences. For one thing the two protagonists, a tall dashing heroic gentleman called Mr. Shelton Hulme and a bumbling English doctor called Daniel Walters M.D, were both closet sex maniacs whose shared motto seemed to be any time, any place, anywhere! 

Watson would find it hilarious! I forwarded it to him at once.

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As I mentioned in my last story, the geography of this part of Scotland was confused by the Highlands/Lowlands matter, and also by Moray (pronounced 'murry', not like the eel I very quickly learned). This was once a great region covering the vast area between Aberdeen and Inverness, an independent kingdom at times before being folded into Scotland. Like so many lands the process had reduced its size considerably and today the county of Morayshire was but a tiny part of the area that it had taken its name from. I was headed towards it but I had the rest of Kincardineshire and two other 'Moray' counties to pass through first, Aberdeenshire and the sight of my next adventure, Banff-shire.

Stonehaven, now the county town of Kincardineshire having replaced the site of my last murder (that came out slightly wrong), was a pleasant little port, and I was grateful to the hotel-owner there who not only provided me with delicious bacon but recommended that I might like the small village of Cove, just south of Aberdeen. This turned out to be a friendly little place, and I spent a week there despite the few ‘tourist’ things in the area. Its friendliness certainly made up for such an absence.

The pleasures of Cove only increased when contrasted with the nearby Granite City, which I found as grey as its name suggested. Rather like Edinburgh it proved a useful transport hub – I particularly enjoyed the long branch up the Dee Valley to Ballater, which I knew Her Majesty often used when travelling to her beloved Balmoral every year. They were fortunate to have a second famous visitor, in my humble opinion.

The towns along the line were all most enjoyable, and I spent time in Peterculter, Banchory (which owing to a meander in the borders was back in Kincardineshire), Aboyne and Ballater itself before returning to Aberdeen. About the only good thing in the place – and I did not yet realize the importance of this – was that a ferry ran via the Northern Isles to Bergen in Norway, and as I planned to visit both those sets of islands I would be able to catch it back here and avoid the lines further north which, I had heard, were far from reliable.

I called in at Ellon where the branch-line to Cruden Bay and Boddam forked away eastwards, and found all three places to my liking. The station-master at Boddam helpfully pointed out that I could avoid three railway journeys by taking a carriage the short distance north to Peterhead, which had its own branch. I liked this small town particularly, and spent a few days there before returning back along its branch to the curiously-named Maud Junction and then on to Fraserburgh. Like Peterhead and so many of the smaller places up here, this quite appealed to me even if the places themselves were not attractive in the conventional ‘tourist’ sense of the word. 

From Fraserburgh I faced another carriage ride along the coast, a long one this time as the alternative was to have to go almost all the way back down to Aberdeen and then double back. I remember thinking as I drove easily along the Aberdeenshire coast that this was such a remote part of the Three Kingdoms that I would surely never come this way again as long as I lived; clearly the Fates were in a mind-reading mood that day because years later I would do exactly the same journey but in the other direction when I would meet a man like no other.

There was a railway station at Macduff, my first port of call in Banff-shire, but again the line ran only back south most of the way to Aberdeen. The county town of Banff within sight across the bay would allow me to head west more easily, but I was in no particular hurry and Macduff seemed particularly welcoming – all right, there _was_ a restaurant that served bacon right next to the hotel I chose although that was sheer coincidence – so I decided to stay for a while.

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Despite the fact that my bastard cousin insisted on including his 'adventures' with my huge friend Benji in his letters – 'someone' was in severe danger of having yet another quadruple session booked for him with a double order of free 'supplies' _and_ the Selkirk twins if he was not careful! - I still liked Luke even if he was as I have said a complete Philistine when it came to culture. But perhaps I should not have criticized him over such things, for I myself had had little time for such fripperies during my travels of late. While in London I had felt the social pressure to attend some plays, operas and performances, not so much for myself but because I knew that Watson's snootier clients expected to be able to read of their doctor being out and about in order to prove that he was of sufficient social standing to treat the likes of them, and some of the events that we attended had been pleasant enough. Others.... fortunately one could buy discreet earplugs. 

I was thinking of this when I saw a play advertised on the board in my hotel. It was one of those odd moments when I read something and then had to look at it again because what I had seen was not what I had thought to have seen. Curious, I asked the hotel-owner Mr. Jefferson if he knew anything of it. He told me that the _maître d'_ Edward was brother-in-law to one of the gentlemen involved and might be able to help me, so I went to look for the fellow.

Mr. Edward Bellingham smiled when I told him what I wanted.

“I would wager that when you first saw it, you thought it said 'Macbeth'”, he said. “That, the imagery and the Shakespeare reference are part of the advertising. My sister Dana is married to Mr. Thomas St. Lisle, who is the director. It is basically Shakespeare's play from the point of view of Macduff, one of the minor characters in the original play. You might enjoy it if you can catch it; they are only doing it for two weeks.”

“Why so little time?” I asked.

“It is one of a series of three plays”, he explained. “The second will be as the character of Malcolm sees it, and the third the real story.”

I was confused.

“It is a real story?” I asked (Watson of course would have known that).

“Also a great example of how even authors the likes of Shakespeare are a bunch of paid liars, according to Tommy”, he smiled. “Macbeth was a ruler of Moray and a good one; he beat young King Duncan in a fair battle rather than stabbing an old man to death in his bed. It was only when he was defeated by Duncan's son who became the famous King Malcolm the Third that history got rewritten. Tommy is very passionate about it, so do not start him off or you will get ear-ache. Lord knows he has enough problems already.”

“What sort of problems?” I asked.

“Actors!” he all but spat out. “Or one actor in particular. The two stars are his brother Raymond and Tommy's friend Mr. Stephen Sayers. Ray is the worst sort of actor imaginable; I only hope that some day soon he will be prevented from performing because his ego will be too large to fit through the theatre door!”

I smiled at that.

“Tommy thinks that Steve is a great actor”, he said, “but he never gets a chance with Ray around. I think that that was why he chose these plays; Steve plays Macduff then Ray gets to be Malcolm. They are both alone on the stage the whole time; actors in the wings do all the voices off as they call them.”

It sounded quite interesting, so I decided that I would go and see this play. Even if I usually had more than enough supersized egos within my own family!

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I have to admit that I was stunned by what I had seen. Mr. Stephen Sayers was a magnificent Macduff, the tortured warrior who adheres to the path of righteousness, is forced to flee for his own life, finds that Macbeth has murdered his wife and son in his absence, then finally gains revenge by killing his enemy in battle. The play worked brilliantly; all the other actors kept to the sides and back of the stage while wearing black cowls so all attention was always on the star of the show, who could not have been more than twenty-five years of age. I could see that the audience, a nearly full one, was with me in the emotional roller-coaster that this brilliant actor was taking us all on.

Afterwards I sought out Mr. Thomas St. Lisle and explained that his brother-in-law who worked at the hotel had recommended the play to me. He thanked me for my kind words.

“I only saw one gentleman who did not seem to be enjoying it”, I said. “A fellow in a rather unfortunate light-brown suit with a yellow shirt; he was scowling through the whole play. I wonder why people like that attend if they are going to be so miserable.”

He sighed.

“That is my brother Raymond”, he said. “He is Malcolm in the second of our plays; he wanted to be the lead in this one too but I said no. He was most put out; he is not used to people saying such a horrible word in his magnificent presence!”

For some inexplicable reason I thought of a certain lounge-lizard of a brother. 

“Mr. Sayers is extremely talented”, I said. “I am surprised that he is not more widely known.”

For some reason that made my interlocutor laugh. I looked at him in surprise.

“I am sorry”, he said, recovering himself. “It is just that Steve is the polar opposite of Ray in that as in almost everything. Steve has all the talent but no appreciation of his skills, Ray simply _knows_ that he is the greatest actor ever to set foot on a stage and that everyone is _obviously_ too dazzled by his sheer brilliance to be able to tell him how wonderful he is.”

I smiled at his remarks.

“One can only hope that Mr. Sayers's talents reach a winder audience one day”, I said, “even if it deprives the citizens of this burgh some most excellent acting.”

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I made some further inquiries before I acted in this matter, but Mr. Sayers was not seeing anyone just now and was indeed the sort of gentleman who might be prepared to travel _if_ his wall of diffidence could be broken down. Fortunately I knew, or at least was acquainted with, the very gentleman who could do just that.

Arguably the greatest actor of that time was Mr. (later Sir) Henry Irving, then in his mid-forties and at the peak of his powers. The previous decade he had caused a major scandal when, after leaving one of his performances with his wife who had been pregnant with their second child, the couple had an argument after which he had alighted from their carriage and had refused to ever see her again. There had been no divorce and some years back he had established a relationship (business and perhaps more) the famous actress Miss Ellen Terry. Which was where the link with my family came from because, against all the laws of mathematical probability, Miss Terry had read my mother's stories - _and had liked them!_

It was a strange, strange world at times!

Since I required a favour from the great actor it would have been impolitic (if arguably justified) had I questioned his new lady's sanity, so I merely wrote to Miss Terry explaining the circumstances and asking if her friend might be prepared to go far out of his way to see an actor whose talent I thought considerable. I did not rate my chances all things considered and was more than a little surprised to receive an answer by telegram from the lady, stating that she had put Mr. Irving on the Night Sleeper and he would be with me the following day. She also said how much she had enjoyed my mother's work from earlier this year, 'Twelve Angry Men', about a knight with a dozen sexually-overcharged squires who drove him through sexual exhaustion into another world.

Apparently it was not safe to return to London just yet!

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I had wondered just why the great Mr. Irving had agreed to travel such a great distance for me, but upon his arrival in Macduff he soon explained matters.

“Ellen had just received a whole new set of works from your mother, sir!” he shuddered. “Not just the knight horror but six more of the damn things! Six! Ye Gods, I would have travelled to Timbuctoo to get away from her when she has those to hand!”

I was just grateful that unlike his lady friend he did not provide me with any details. I was still thinking of those squires!

“I am certainly no expert in the field of acting”, I said, “but I have never been more moved over a performance. However Mr. Sayers is extremely modest and is not the sort of gentleman to put himself forward.”

He looked at me as if I had suggested that the moon was made of cheese!

 _”An actor?”_ he said incredulously. _”Modest?_ Have I travelled back in time to All Fool's Day, sir?”

I smiled at his vehemence.

“I have met some of your profession in my career”, I said, “so I can understand how unlikely that seems. I have a box for tonight's performance which includes a short piece about the second of the three plays. I have also booked you a room for the night.”

“Ellen has read your friend the doctor's books”, he said, “and she rates your judgement, Mr. Holmes. To paraphrase dear old Bill Shakespeare, lead on Macduff!”

I smiled at that

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Mr. Sayers was once again brilliant that evening, his sheer quality made all the more obvious by the five-minute piece from the Malcolm-based play that would start when this one ended. Mr. Raymond St. Lisle was not much older than his fellow Thespian but he was atrocious by comparison; indeed he would have been atrocious by comparison to the theatre cat! It was fortunate for him that his nose was so elevated during his entire performance, in that he missed all the sniggers from the audience.

Once the show was finished Mr. Thomas St. Lisle had arranged a small get-together for the actors which I and Mr. Irving would attend. The great actor had not said what he had thought of what he had seen, and his countenance was such that even I who considered myself good at reading people had no idea how he felt. I only hoped that he would consider my dragging him almost to the end of Great Britain worth it, even if it had allowed him to escape my mother's stories.

_What was I thinking? Like him, I would have gone to Timbuctoo to get away from those!_

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It was amusing to see the reactions of the various actors when they realized just who had been in their audience that night. Shock, mortification and worry seemed the dominant effects; poor Mr. Sayers very clearly wanted to make a run for it but he knew that for the play's sake that he would have to stay.

“Amazing little play you have here, sir”, Mr. Irving said to Mr. Thomas St. Lisle. “Of course one of the actors stood out a mile. Mind if I have a word with him?”

I bit back a smile as the director's brother visibly puffed himself up and stepped forward.

 _”I_ am here!” he announced grandly.

“More is the pity!” Mr. Irving snipped. “I have seen better acting in the House of Commons, sir. I can only be thankful that I shall be gone before you attempt to destroy the second piece in this set; the writers surely do not deserve a fate worse than _your_ being on stage and ruining their lines!”

Mr. Raymond St. Lisle opened and closed his mouth several times but no words came out.

“That was probably the best acting you did all evening”, Mr. Irving snipped. _“Mr. Sayers!”_

The young actor had been very obviously trying to hide behind a group his fellows, who rather disobligingly all parted like the proverbial Red Sea waves.

“Never witnessed such a brilliant performance!” the great actor said. “I would want to see if you can extend that beyond old Bill, of course. Ever been to London, sir?”

Mr. Sayers visibly reeled.

“I have not, sir”, he managed at last.

Mr. Irving looked at him shrewdly.

“You remind me of young Stewart”, he said. “Scottish through and through. Ellen and I have a theatre in Edinburgh; would you be prepared to go there?”

Clearly still astonished at the turn of events, the young man nodded.

“Yes sir”, he managed.

“The are putting on a series of Dickens's works just now”, Mr. Irving said. “We can start you with a small role – unfair to throw you in the deep end with no time to rehearse – but when we move on to Miss Austen this autumn I rather think that you would make a fine Mr. D'Arcy.”

 _One of the great roles of English theatre_ , I thought, _and one which Mr. Irving had himself been renowned for._

“Thank you Mr. Holmes, for bringing me here”, Mr. Irving said, turning back to me. “I think I shall take in tomorrow's performance as well, then go and check on the Edinburgh theatre. Just to allow Ellen time to, er, catch up on her reading.”

And that was why he was one of our greatest actors ever – _he somehow kept a straight face while saying that!_

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Mr. Stephen Sayers went on to become the finest Scottish actor of his generation. Mr. Irving had as with so much been right as to his assessment of his character; the gentleman refused many generous offers to ply his trade south of the Border and even abroad. Although he maintained a house in the Scottish capital he married a lady from Macduff and established his family home here, where his life was mercifully considerably less irregular than that of his patron. He did thank me for my efforts on his behalf, but is it not truly written that into every life a little rain must fall? Because his new wife became friends with Miss Terry, and through her developed a liking for my mother's dreadful stories. 

I _think_ that he was still grateful to me, though!

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	18. Case 93: The Adventure Of The Street-Fighters ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. Elgin, the county town of Morayshire (or Elginshire), is the scene for another adventure into the past as Holmes's stepbrother Campbell requests his help for a relative of his whose quiet retirement is being disturbed by a local bigot. The great detective both rewrites history and rights a wrong.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

I seemed to have once again landed in a part of Scotland which, like the Borders, struck a most pleasant chord with me. Here too the towns and villages were small and compact, as well as the addition of the winds blowing in from the North Sea which, mercifully, I barely felt (Watson had always been jealous of that, I knew, and on more than one occasion had blushed when he had found himself….. manfully embracing me). After Macduff and Banff I ran through a whole string of enjoyable places – Whitehills, Portsoy, Cullen, Portknockie, Findochty, Buckie and Portgordon - before entering Morayshire (or Elginshire as it is sometimes called) at Garmouth. At any of these places I could have happily spent weeks, the only slight hiccough being when I changed at Elgin to reach Lossiemouth, which reminded me rather unfortunately of my brother Randall who had been dispatched to a military base near here for one of his many female _faux pas_. Still it was a charming place and I was almost tempted to send my brother a card to remind him of his exile here. 

What do you mean; I would not have been that cruel?

Everything seemed good in my world just now, particularly as Watson had sounded very upbeat in his last telegram and was now barely six months from returning. I knew that he had to give a minimum of three months' notice if he wanted to leave his posting, so I could feel the anticipation growing inside of me. Although even a thousand miles away, his cynicism was making me wonder just what would go wrong next. 

Said cynicism would one day be proven all too correct.

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From Lossiemouth – yes, I did send that card – I returned to Elgin, the county town of Morayshire which turned out to be another very pleasant small town, although I was again swiftly corrected to 'small _burgh_ '. I wondered if there was some sort of celebration or event coming up as there was bunting and other paraphernalia up and down the main road through the place, and asked at the hotel where I was staying. The landlady Mrs. Stewart, a fierce-looking female of some fifty years with more plaid on her personage than I would have thought possible, seemed to have some sort of eye problem from the way that she kept winking at me, but she eventually told me what was behind it.

“It's the commemoration for the battle”, she explained. “Everyone's heard of the Battle of Culloden in 1746, but we had our part in it too. The Prince’s men tried to hold the crossing of the Spey east of the town at Fochabers but withdrew when they saw the size of the government forces. Stinking Billy† managed to get a force of men round the back of them and they came into Elgin from the south just as the Prince's men were marching through the town. Most of them got away; they say it only lasted a quarter of an hour or so. We still mark it every April twelve, except all this spring and early summer we had that dreaded cattle disease so we had to delay it.”

I thanked her and walked away, being careful not to make any comment on what she had told me. My stepbrother Campbell had warned me that Culloden was still a sore point especially up in the Highlands, given the atrocities carried out by the British government after their victory and the frankly stupid suppression of all Scots culture, Highland _and_ Lowland, that had endured for nearly a century afterwards. More recently of course there has been the Clearances; many of the landowners committing those acts had been Scottish but then history was far too full of people with incredibly selective vision when it came to what they did see and chose not to see, as our own era was witnessing with Germany ‘forgetting’ its part in the Great War. That sort of behaviour was one thing that I could guarantee would _never_ change, worse luck!

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It was odd that I was thinking of my stepbrother just then, for the very next day I had a telegram from him (I had told him that he could use Luke to contact me if necessary, assuming that Benji had not killed our cousin through sex just yet; one lived in hope). Campbell said that a cousin of his, one Colonel William Kerr (not a close relative but one of the few that he actually liked) was having problems and that as he lived just outside the town, might I go and see if I could help? I wired back and said that I would, then set off for 'Lossie And Foundie' in the hope that this sort-of relative had better taste than his choice of house name implied.

Colonel William Kerr was about sixty years of age and even without his appellation he was very obviously ex-military from his bearing alone, if the mock sentry-boxes outside his front door (more points lost!) had not suggested as much. He was however an honest-looking fellow clearly worn down by something, and was greatly relieved that I had answered his call for help.

“It concerns this damn battle, sir”, he said. “You see, my great-great-grandfather whose name I bear fought on the government side at Culloden, and was a key figure in the skirmish fought in the streets of this town. Duke William wanted to crush the two thousand men holding the bridge over the Spey so sent my great-great-grandfather across the river higher up. He only had about five hundred men but they were on horseback so were able to just catch the tail of the rebels as they came through the town.”

“It does sound a rather small affair”, I said, “although I would never say as much in the town of course.”

“It was rather more significant than the history books make out, sir”, he said. “You see, the rebels only lost a few dozen men but among them was one of their leaders, a cousin of King Louis, and his loss lowered the morale of the French troops in the main battle which was a lot closer than people believe.”

“So what exactly is your problem a century and a half on?” I asked.

“Mr. Philip Cameron, sir”, he said bitterly. “Like me he is a descendant of someone who fought on that fatal field, Donald Cameron of Locheil in his case. That gentleman fled to France after the defeat and Mr. Cameron came over from there last year, changing his name from Philippe to Philip. He has been targeting me ever since, such that I can no longer go into the town without people whispering about me.”

I stared at him shrewdly.

“I know that memories run long in these parts”, I said, “but I find it difficult to believe that people could be made to hold a grudge against you for an ancestor that you could never have met.”

Even as I said that, I recalled poor Watson and his traitorous grandfather. Perhaps people's memories did go back that far. The ex-soldier sighed.

“He has been making much play of my late father, who died some years back”, he said. “He was, I am sorry to say, not a good man. Mr. Cameron's father Louis had wished to return to the town over a decade ago and to repurchase the old family home, but my father used his influence to prevent that. I did not know about it until he died and the family lawyer informed me; naturally I ceased all such activities but Mr. Cameron's father was by then an ill man, dying not long after. I think that the fellow resents that my father prevented his from dying in what he regarded as his homeland.”

“What about your own family?” I asked. He sighed unhappily.

“That is yet another problem”, he said. “I married late in life but was fortunate enough to be blessed with three sons. All of them are however hot-headed, and they bitterly resent the way that we have been treated of late. I fear that unless some action is taken to remedy matters, they will do something to Mr. Cameron and matters will escalate from there.”

I stared at him thoughtfully.

“I suppose that that is a danger”, I said. “Yes, I will do what I can to help you sir, especially as you are Campbell's cousin.”

“Thank you”, he smiled.

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I returned to the town and wired to Miss St. Leger, asking her to make certain inquiries about a certain person in Elgin. I also asked around about the three Kerr boys, and soon learned that Francis (Frank), the youngest at twenty-one, was regarded as the most hot-headed of the three. He worked up at Burghead on the coast west of here, running his father's small fleet of boats, so I took a train there to see him.

Mr. Frank Kerr was little like his father except for the curious light-blue eyes that they shared. The young fellow was tall with red curly hair which, coupled with a scar on his face, gave him a somewhat fierce appearance. He was initially suspicious of me until I was able to explain the purpose of my visit.

“Father has had nothing but trouble from that family!” he said firmly. “But short of pinning Mr. Cameron to a wall and threatening to kill him unless he stops, what is to be done?”

“Like all bullies, a good method is to encourage them to overreach themselves”, I said. “I have heard in town that you have a reputation for enjoying your beer, sir?”

He looked at me warily.

“Nothing wrong in that”, he said defensively.

“Indeed”, I said. “It is that with which we will entrap the vile Mr. Cameron. Now this is what I would like you to do.....

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The commemorations for the battle were to be held on the coming Saturday, and on the Friday there was a public meeting of the town council to sort out any last-minute problems. I was sure that Mr. Cameron would be unable to resist the 'carrot' that had been dangled before him, and sure enough he was there at the front of the hall waiting his turn to speak and looking positively gleeful.

He really should not have been. 

Finally the windbags of the council had had their say – Watson had been so right when he had wondered why scientists did not devote more effort to harnessing all that hot air as a source of interminable power – and Mr. Cameron strode purposefully to the rostrum. He brandished the document that he had in his hand like a broadsword.

“I have recently come into possession of a most important and valuable historical document”, he said. “It states quite categorically that one William Kerr, who has been unjustifiably lauded as the saviour of the enemy in the Battle of Elgin, had in fact been planning to desert to _our_ side. Only the encounter with the rightful king’s troops in which he sustained a mild injury forced him to abandon his traitorous plans.”

I stood up.

“I am Mr. Sherlock Holmes”, I said, “and while I too have something to say on the subject of that encounter and its aftermath, I would first like to challenge the authenticity of the document that that person is holding.”

Mr., Cameron looked at me in shock.

“This is an official document, sir”, he said frostily. “I would not have become aware of its existence had not that fool Kerr's son not gotten drunk the other night and blurted out that he had it at his place. I very righteously sought to obtain it for the public good.”

He managed to say that with a straight face. I was almost impressed.

“Unfortunately for you, sir, the document must be a fake”, I said. “I would draw your attention not to the words themselves, but to the paper that they are written on. If you examine it closely, you will see that the paper is just that, paper.”

“So?” Mr. Cameron sneered. I smiled at him.

“It is not common knowledge”, I said, “but to prevent anyone from faking documents that could pretend to be from someone in the military, our commanders only ever use _official_ Army paper for their internal letters. Mr. Kerr wished to know if the document that he had was authentic, so I sent for some such paper from my brother who is in the Army. You will see that it has a faint but clearly detectable monogram of letters and numbers, which are changed every year as an extra security measure. There are none on this note, so Colonel Kerr's ancestor could not possibly have written it. I also obtained a copy of a note that is indeed his; you will note that the handwriting differs in a number of ways. Feel free to examine both, gentlemen.”

I walked past a glowering Mr. Cameron and handed both papers to the clerk of the council, who passed them along then approached the man at the rostrum for his document. He got a glare but also got his document which too was passed along the line. 

“This seems conclusive, sir”, the mayor said, looking pointedly at Mr. Cameron who had gone rather red. “You said that there was something else that you had to say about the battle, sir?”

“I am afraid that I have”, I said. “Or rather, its aftermath. You see, sir, I know from my own experience that the shadows of past deeds can cast all the way to the present, so at first I did not consider it surprising that this was what seemed to have happened her in beautiful Morayshire. However, my inquiries down in London revealed that there was rather more to matters than first met the eye.”

“Mr. Cameron's motive _seemed_ to have been resentment at the Kerrs, for both their distant ancestor who fought here and for Colonel Kerr's father who quite maliciously blocked his own father from returning to Scotland before his death. That seemed little in the way of motive, although sadly I have known criminals who had acted on less. But when I dug a little deeper, I discovered the whole truth.”

I produced another document from my folder.

“This has been obtained from Calais”, I said, noting how Mr. Cameron paled at that word, “and shows something rather curious concerning the late Monsieur Louis Cameron. That gentleman's illness led the person at the rostrum to make inquiries into why he could not obtain the old family house in this town, whereby he found that Colonel Kerr's father had been deliberately frustrating such a move. Unfortunately he also found rather more - _namely that Monsieur Louis Cameron was not his own father!”_

“You lie!” Mr, Cameron yelled. I shook my head at him.

“You found that your mother had had an affair and that Monsieur Louis Cameron, knowing about it but having no other sons, had decided to accept you and raise you as his son. You are therefore no blood descendant of the Cameron of Locheil, who was defeated both here and at Culloden before fleeing to France. In revenge for their inadvertently showing you the truth, you set out to destroy the Kerrs as much as you could....”

Mr. Cameron uttered an obscenity and swept from the rostrum. I smiled as he departed.

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“It is all about justice”, I said to Colonel Kerr as I prepared to leave the burgh (Mr. Cameron had already left the town, returning to his native France). “I do not like any abuse of power, past or present. There is no excuse for such behaviour.”

He looked at me and smiled.

“I _have_ read Doctor Watson's stories, sir”, he said in a tone of mild reproof. “I think that if I mentioned the word 'bacon'....”

He trailed off, and I glared at him. So what if I had very occasionally sent my friend a look across the breakfast table that alw.... sometimes had had him forking a small, often minuscule number of his own rashers.

“That”, I said haughtily, “is _quite_ different!”

He just looked at me. Damnation!

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_Notes:_   
_† The skirmish at Elgin is fictitious, although both sides did come through the town after the Prince’s men withdrew from the Spey Bridge, the battle being fought four days later on the sixteenth. The flower called the pink was renamed the Sweet William because of the victory won by King George the Third’s second son William Duke of Cumberland; the despicable actions of his men against the Highland clans after the battle led the Scots to rename the stinkwort as the Stinking Billy!_

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	19. Case 94: The Adventure Of The Findhorn Photographs ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. Malicious gossip and a suspicious landowner combine to suggest that someone has been naughty in Nairnshire. Holmes seeks out the truth and proves again that the camera can indeed lie.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

I have to say that I took to Morayshire (certain Frenchmen apart) much as I had done to Banff-shire before it, and also enjoyed both the fishing-village of Findhorn (reached from a small branch-line running from Kinloss) and the town of Forres. I looked forward to my brief crossing of the third and last of the smaller counties of this area, Nairnshire, before I reached Inverness. Although a small place, that town held a great influence over the countryside beyond it as it held a significant proportion of the population beyond the Great Glen, the mighty chasm that cuts across Scotland from south-west to north-east ending in mighty Loch Ness (a name that I cannot consider without shuddering at Mother's story of the monster in it that used its tentacles to gran Scotsmen….. there!).

Nairnshire however turned out to be something of a disappointment, at least initially. It was the last day of August when I crossed into it but it seemed that autumn and for that matter winter had come early; a heavy fog blanked out the countryside around my train and I was glad to alight in Nairn, my only stop in the county, and find a hotel for a night or so. Summer in the Highlands had, it seemed, run its course.

The next day was a little better although the fog still lingered, and I decided to restrict myself to walking around the town. It was a Monday so the place was fairly quiet, and there seemed few if any tourists. In one shop window I saw that they made a local delicacy that was some sort of jam and cream biscuit, and thinking that my friend Miss St. Leger would likely enjoy them I went inside to inquire if they shipped to London. Fortunately they did, so I purchased an amount that had the shopkeeper's eyebrows rising sharply.

“It is for a friend back in London”, I smiled, “around whom no jam cream finger is safe!”

“She will love these then”, the fellow said confidently. “My sister-in-law is the same, and she is always in here. We can ship more if she likes to order them over the telegraph; our local bank has an arrangement with one in London.”

I was pleased at that, for like me Miss St. Leger – I had only once made the mistake of using her first name in her presence, and had received the sort of look that had made me think it was high time I sorted my life insurance! - never usually received any gifts for her excellent service, just the pay (although when Watson worked at his surgery he sometimes did not even receive that!). She would enjoy these, and it would make up for having to deal with the occasional pestilential lounge-lizard whom she might otherwise have gone and strangled, which would have been terrible because….. because….. it would come to me eventually.

A second young fellow came out and began to stock some of the shelves along the back. I managed to control my reaction; he had some of the whitest skin I had ever seen! My first thought was that he was an albino but one of Watson's clients suffered from that and as he was a good friend of his I knew the signs. This fellow just seemed _pale._

The first shopworker clearly spotted my reaction but he was well-bred enough not to comment on it. We finalized our transaction, I thanked him and left.

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It was as it turned out curious that I should have run across the pale-skinned gentleman when I did because he was to become a central part of my next case, which began when I was outside the church a short distance away. A fellow who was quite clearly a servant approached me and asked if I were Mr. Sherlock Holmes, and if so might I spare his master Lord Findhorn a few moments of my time? I remembered that as the name of the small village I had visited before Forres back in Morayshire and looked at him for a moment, before following him to the cart that he had brought into town to fetch me.

We were approaching a large house just east of the town which my guide had just told me was our destination when I suddenly spoke.

“Stop!”

The servant, who had introduced himself as Lord Findhorn's footman Bridie, looked surprised but pulled the cart to a halt. We were in a small dip and behind a high stone wall so could not be seen from the house, which was why I had waited until now before speaking.

“You mentioned earlier that your master wished me to investigate a personal matter for him”, I said. “But you yourself clearly know something about this, and you are for some reason uneasy. I will of course keep anything that you tell me in confidence but I would like to know what it is that you are aware of, especially as it is something you very clearly suspect that your master might not tell me.”

He blushed fiercely. I thought that he might try to bluff his way out but he did not.

“My master is concerned about his son, Mr. Peter”, he said. “He is the pale-skinned fellow that you may have seen in the shop earlier; I saw you coming out. He thinks..... this is difficult, sir.”

“Many things in life are”, I said, for some reason thinking of my family at that particular moment, “but you would not be so nervous if you did not think that what you know is important. My friend Doctor Watson faces that as a problem every day, in that for various reasons people withhold some of the things wrong with them yet still expect an accurate diagnosis. I can only help your master if I have _all_ the facts, can I not?”

He nodded.

“His other sons, Mr. Gregory and Mr. John, are convinced that their mother....”

He stopped, clearly embarrassed. I waited patiently.

“Mr. Peter is twenty-five years of age”, he said. “My master's marriage to my mistress was an arranged one as was common at the time and the first few years were... turbulent.”

I suspected a very slight understatement there. Either that or this fellow was a diplomat in the making.

“My mistress had been enamoured of a gypsy fellow who had no money”, he said. “You see, he had the same pale skin as Mr. Peter so......”

He really was very good at conveying things without saying them. I could guess exactly what his master had thought, which in turn led to one very obvious question.

“Why now?” I pressed. “I doubt that your master has waited for some two decades and is just happening to take my chance passing through the area to finally start doing something. What else has happened?”

“My mistress died two months ago”, he explained. “Among her possessions Mr. Gregory found a picture of this gypsy fellow friend. It was not just the skin; he had Mr. Peter's strange-shaped nose too.”

I had observed what I had thought was a broken nose on the fellow but had of course not said anything. I looked hard at the valet.

“You do not like Mr. Gregory, or Mr. John?” I asked.

He was clearly surprised at my observation, but nodded. 

“They are too pompous for men still young, even for what they are”, he said. “None of the servants like them.”

That was damning indeed; a servant's opinion was usually sound. I looked at him expectantly; there was clearly something more.

“You see, I am new to the house”, he said, “and have only been there for a year or so. I think that some of the other servants know more about what happened with Lady Findhorn and that fellow, but are afraid to talk. My master is not a bad person but he is very touchy when it comes to family; the last servant who dared to make a comment that they thought might not get back to him was fired when he found out.”

“Let us drive on”, I said. “Thank you for being so honest, Bridie. I can see one possible answer to this riddle but I wish to see what your master tells me – and for that matter, what he does not tell me – before I act. And I promise that I will say nothing of what you have told me.”

He nodded, clearly relieved, and we rode on.

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Lord Findhorn was a nondescript blond fellow in his late forties, and with his other sons present I could see that there was nothing of him in any of his offspring. Come to that....

“This is the damn picture, sir”, he said passing an old photograph across to me.

The picture was I thought fairly unremarkable, having yellowed with age even allowing for the fact that the early photographic methods often had a sepia effect. A tall young gentleman was sat frowning at the camera (it was common knowledge that the reason people looked so stern or sometimes just constipated in the older photographs was that because a pose had to be held for some time, and a frown was easier to maintain than a smile). The subject was unremarkable except for his pale skin which still glowed even at this age, and his bent nose. He had been recorded for posterity from the other side of a writing-desk which partly obscured his body. His clothes were clearly cheap and there was definitely something of the gypsy about him. He reminded me not a little of Mr. Guy Jackson, who had assisted me back in Galashiels.

_(I might add here that I had been able to repay Mr. Jackson’s helpfulness even more recently. While I had been in Fraserburgh I had received a message from Mr. Hanson telling me that Mr. Jackson was being forced to withdraw from his course as his mother had finally tired of his father’s attitude and had left him, and his father had retaliated by withdrawing all funding for his son and so forcing him to drop out. I had sent back that I would fund the fellow to the end of his course – he had less than two years to go – and all had been well. I had not informed Mr. Jackson directly as I judged him not to be the sort who would easily accept charity; instead he was the recipient of a strange scholarship that ‘kicked in’ when a student was forced to drop out against their will._

_(Yes, the thought did cross my mind that the pre-Watson Sherlock Holmes would never have done such a thing. But I was a better man now.)_

“I am sorry to have to ask this, sir”, I said, “but given the nature of the matter I think that I should speak with some of your servants.”

“Why?” Mr. John Rose demanded at once.

“I think that they may have some information that is pertinent to establishing the truth in this matter”, I said. “I will of course have to interview them alone; were one of you to be present they would doubtless feel too awed to say anything.”

Both the young men clearly enjoyed the idea that they might have such an effect on lesser mortals, although the nobleman himself looked more wary.

“Are you sure, Mr. Holmes?” he asked.

“There are few certainties in this world”, I said. “But if what I suspect to be the case is true, then some further enquiries should establish the truth about your late wife. I think that I shall even be able to provide you with proof as to which of your sons is of your blood, which is after all what you want.”

“That is true”, he conceded. “Very well. John, take him downstairs.”

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It had not just been Bridie’s words; I had caught a familiar expression of the faces of both Mr. John and Mr. Gregory Rose that I knew from experience; they thought that they had pulled off some sort of trick and were trying (and failing) not to openly celebrate that fact. And when I took longer to look at that photograph, there was one very obvious incongruity in it. 

As Bridie had suspected, the servants who had been there longer than him knew a lot more than their 'betters' upstairs suspected, and for the price of a few sovereigns plus the assurance of anonymity they were prepared to share it with me. I was pleased to find that both of my suppositions seemed to be correct. But I would need more evidence than the word of some servants which, I knew, the likes of Lord Findhorn would never accept.

The following day I went to Inverness and spent the day looking around the photography shops there, which were rather more numerous than I had both thought and hoped. After a lot of effort it seemed that I had hazarded and lost, but a helpful young fellow called Connor at the last place I visited suggested that I might try one of the major hotels where they had a private photographer 'on call' for their more important guests. Although when I went to see this Mr. Martin Holland, he was not willing to co-operate with me. At first.

“Let us speak plainly”, I said, losing patience with the fellow. “This is a criminal matter and you, the perpetrators and the gentleman who assisted you are all looking at a long time in gaol if and when it comes to court. I am representing Lord Findhorn and, given that he stands to suffer a family loss when I inform him of my findings, I believe that he will do as so many in his position with the money do and pay for the problem to just go away. In that case there would be no criminal proceedings – but if you try my patience, sir, the police-station in this fine town is within an easy walk of this building.”

He very clearly weighed the risks before answering, and made his first wise decision of the day.

“All right”, he said a little sulkily. “How did you guess?”

I glared at him.

“I did not 'guess'” I said frostily. “You and your clients made more than one mistake, and I have found you out. You had better hope that Lord Findhorn chooses the option that I mentioned earlier, or the police will soon be calling at your door. The photograph, please.”

He sighed but went over to a writing-desk which he unlocked. He extracted a slim brown folder which he handed to me. Not trusting such a villain I opened it, and was relieved to see the contents. Another old photograph, not dissimilar from the first one in this case save for some rather important differences.

“Who was the gypsy?” I asked. “Or did they not tell you?”

He baulked at my apparent omniscience.

“A fellow called Tam”, he said. “He came with them when they asked for the picture; I do not know where they found him. He went off to Ireland afterwards.”

“That might be far enough to save him”, I said. “Him. The rest of you had better hope that Lord Findhorn is in a generous mood.”

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“I have concluded my investigation into your late wife, sir”, I told Lord Findhorn the following day (I had made sure that Mr. Peter Rose was working his shift at the shop before coming here). “You asked me to investigate whether your wife had been unfaithful, resulting in you housing someone not of your own blood in your own house.”

He looked surprised at my choice of words but nodded.

“Was she?” he asked.

“Yes. I also have proof of it.”

That clearly surprised both him and the two young men. Mr. John and Mr. Gregory Rose exchanged looks of triumph before quickly straightening their faces; fortunately for them they were both behind their father.

“So the photograph was right”, the nobleman said.

“No”, I said. “Contrary to the old saying, in this instance the camera _did_ lie.”

They all looked at me in surprise.

“You are saying that the photograph was not real?” Lord Findhorn asked.

I smiled at them all.

 _”That_ photograph was not real”, I said. “This one, on the other hand, is.”

I could see the exact moment when the nobleman's two sons realized. They went almost as pale as their absent brother. Or to be more accurate, half-brother.

“Some months ago your two sons here discovered the original of _this_ photograph”, I said. “As you can see is shows a young gentleman who looks decidedly ill-at-ease behind a writing-desk. At the time that this photograph was taken he was a servant in this house; he left nearly two decades ago.”

Lord Findhorn was clearly confused. His sons were giving me beseeching looks, clearly begging me not to say what I was about to say. As if!

“This picture was taken twenty-three years ago”, I said. “I will not ask you to do so now, but you may if you wish obtain a magnifying glass and examine the calendar which sits on the writing-desk. The year on it is 1862.”

“This is nonsense, Father!” Mr. John Rose said roundly. “This fellow is just after another fat fee.”

“I am quite happy to accept no payment at all in this, sir”, I said smoothly. “Indeed, given the nature of the ill news that I am springing on your father, it would hardly be surprising if he chose not to pay me. Lord Findhorn, I would draw your attention to this handsome fellow's _ears.”_

“What about his ears?” the nobleman asked, clearly nonplussed.

“My friend Doctor Watson once lamented that it was a pity technology had not advanced sufficiently to make ear-prints as well as finger-prints”, I said. “Although with the way things are going however, who knows? The human ear is indeed a most distinctive thing – and the unusual, almost rectangular ear-lobe of this saucy fellow is present on two other people in this very room.”

Lord Findhorn turned and looked hard at both his sons, who were both trying to turn in such a way as to keep their ears out of his sight. Not easy.

“But I do not understand about the photograph found in my late wife's things”, he said.

“When they found _this_ photograph, the real one, your younger sons realized the danger at once”, I said. “As bastards they might well be disinherited, and I have to tell you sir that from your servants I learned that the ‘gentleman’ in this picture was seen by more than one of them entering your wife’s bedroom at what one might term the apposite times prior to the birth of these.... men. They discovered this, so took action.”

He blinked several times as he tried to take this all in.

“They sought out someone who bore a passable resemblance to the pale-skinned young fellow linked to your late wife then went to a photographer in Inverness. Your servants tell me, by the way, that there was nothing between your wife and that gentleman; the feelings such as they were were totally on her side and he left the area as a result of her actions. The 'model' in this photograph disguised himself well, talcum powder paling his skin and nose putty completing the image, then the photographer used his skills to make it look as if the photograph was of the right age.

“He is lying, father!” Mr. Gregory Rose said, but even he sounded like he did not believe that.

“Finally there is the evidence that shows the original photograph was faked”, I said. “It was correctly dated to the start of the year 1860 and seems legitimate – but if you again use a magnifying glass on the newspaper on the very edge of the picture, you will see that if is a headline from the start of the dreadful American Civil War that only began the following year. It is therefore clearly a fake, its only purpose being to instigate the attempt by these two men to try to disinherit their elder brother.”

The nobleman looked hard at his ‘sons’.

“Out by sunset!” he said coldly.

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Postscriptum: Lord Findhorn was devastated by the perfidy of his supposed sons, and did indeed banish the two young villains from his house. However Mr. Peter Rose, to his supreme credit considering what his siblings had tried to do to him, persuaded his father to amend his decision somewhat and to grant them small settlements which, while far from what that had been used to, at least kept them from penury. I understand that both men later married and settled into respectable lives; Mr. Peter Rose himself married a rich local lady and they had five children. He succeeded his father as Lord Findhorn and he continues to prosper in the cold North.

Oh, and most importantly of all, Miss St. Leger _loved_ those biscuits!

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	20. Interlude: Birthday Surprise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. There are Consequences....

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!

_I had a son!_

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Of all the people it had to be Private Lionel Bull who gave me the bad news, not knowing the effect that it would have on me. He was a merry young fellow who always looked a little semi-detached from the world, but he was excellent at his job which was making sure that supplies were where they were with us supposed to be. Which was not easy when dealing with the incompetent buffoons back in London who, incredibly, had once sent us a whole load of winter woollens!

He came in that fateful day – Holmes's birthday, September the third of all days – and seemed unusually happy even for him.

“Good news?” I asked.

“Matt has had his first son”, he smiled. “A boy; they are going to call him Ivan which is a bit unusual. I didn't know there was any Russian blood in his mother's family.”

“Matt who?” I asked, thinking idly that that was the Russian equivalent of my own name.

“Matt Leeds”, he said. “You remember, he married that flirt Miss Bradley. She went back with him, thankfully; I did not like having her around at all. She even made a play for me one time, and with Bet right there next to me!”

I suddenly realized. _Oh Lord, surely not?_

“When was he born?” I asked as casually as I could. “We all know how long news takes to reach us down here.”

“Two days ago”, he said, effectively sinking my slender hopes. “Wonders of the wires, eh? He was two months premature but they managed to save him, thank God.”

Mercifully he went off to presumably do some form-filling of his own, leaving me to try to piece together my shattered world. Eliz.... that dratted woman had left with Captain Matthew Leeds back in February and I had suspected something when Lionel had told me of his friend's boasting, 'bugger the Church; Lise says that I do not have to wait!'. Clearly she must have realized by then that what we had done had.... so she had persuaded her future husband to.... Lord, why was my life such a mess?

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It was ridiculous, but I somehow felt that in going back to England there was the awful possibility that I might run into... her. And my son! The Leeds family lived somewhere out in the country near their namesake town in Yorkshire so I could avoid that area, but what if they came to London? With my luck Sherlock was bound to get a case in their home town, likely with them or their neighbours. 

Yes, I was being cynical. As in the is a seven-letter word starting with 'c'. Like 'correct'.

Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!

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	21. Case 95: The Adventure Of The Stuffed Shirt ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. Just when Holmes is beginning to think that he has seen it all, he discovers that for some people revenge is a dish best served with stuffing. A year-old disappearance seems unsolvable – should the great detective even try to solve it, given the unpleasantness of both the victim and the victim's father requesting his help?  
> As things turns out, he really, really, REALLY should not have done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: When the great detectiver later listed the twelve most horrible deaths that people had met in his many cases (see Appendix 6), this case made the list - at number one!

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

I have always held that the veneer of civilization is a thin one, and that Mankind's brutish nature can break through without warning. Society can provide some safeguards such as a justice system plus laws to protect and defend but if they fail, as I had seen to such effect in my Kincardineshire adventure not so long ago, and further back in the Forest of Dean, the consequences can be terrible.

You might not want to read this story if you have eaten recently. After it, my Sunday roasts were never quite the same. And a certain aspect of Victorian existence always made me feel queasy.

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I am forced at this point in my writings (and Lord alone how Watson does it; my notes are a mere fraction of his works yet my wrist hurts like blazes!) to do one of those things that will I know annoy any readers should this story ever see the light of day. One of the few and of course totally unjustified criticisms levelled at my friend was that he so often made references to cases he could not fully narrate for various reasons. I know that in his final (1936) canon he made a conscious effort to avoid that, but sometimes it was unavoidable. So when I say that my planned short stay in Inverness became one of almost three months' duration because I had to involve myself in a case involving Her Majesty's Government, I hope that the reader will understand that I cannot say any more.

I have to mention this matter because it explains why it was mid-November before I left Inverness and headed north into Ross-shire. In the west of this county lay the small hamlet of Mycroft from which my useless eldest brother takes his name and where the Holmes family has its Scottish hunting estate. However terrifying one may think those ancient clansmen, they had nothing on Mother armed with a gun! Or as Watson once said, with a pen and paper!

I mentioned Mycroft because shortly after I arrived in Inverness he and Rachael had a son, Midas. I do not say a second son for I knew full well that Tantalus, born two years back, was the offspring of the satyric Prince Tane whose visit to England in late 1882 had so exhausted Watson and had left several society ladies with more than a little explaining to do nine months after he had left, particularly when their offspring were not exactly white (luckily for Rachael she had some American ancestor somewhere among her antecedents, which was just as well because even as a baby Tantalus had a lot of his father about him, a resemblance that only increased with the passing years. Luckily Mycroft was not the sort to take a hint unless he was being hit over the head with it – an appealing idea I might add, and given his own extra-marital antics he fully deserved to be laughed at from behind his back.

Mycroft's moment in the sun had also been short-lived when Anna had had her second son a week after Midas's birth, and Mother had been delighted that the boy was to be called Desmond (she was distantly related to those Irish earls, for which I was sure they were hopeful that she would remain distant!). So all Mycroft's boasting about 'having the golden touch' lasted but a few days, and I might add here that his 'real' son came to inherit all his father's characteristics, to his ultimate discomfort. As for Tantalus, he inherited the character as well as the physical features of his real father – and one day he would help me greatly.

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So to the matter at hand. As always I found any case concerning the government draining, much as any teacher feels after dealing with recalcitrant children all day, and was looking forward to some well-earned rest. I had fitted in my sight-seeing in Inverness around my case work so I continued north to Dingwall, the county town of Ross-shire. The place was on the main railway line as well as being the junction for the line across Scotland to the west coast and the Isle of Skye, so I stopped there in the belief that the serene setting beneath the hills would enable me to leave the world and its problems behind for a while. 

Instead I ran into one of the most frightening gentlemen that it has ever been my misfortune to come across! 

I was quite relieved to find that although there was presumably some crime in Dingwall, there was nothing that seemed of interest to a consulting detective. I so nearly escaped my date with the horror that I was fated to encounter; on the very evening before my departure the fellow who would request (demand) my services chanced to come into town, found I was there and _insisted_ on seeing me. He was the sort of client who did themselves no favours from the moment that they opened their mouths, and were of course totally oblivious to that fact.

“Mr. Holmes!”

The fellow across from me and currently standing between myself and the dining-hall (I usually eschewed hotel food outside breakfasts but they offered a bacon option of an evening) was about five foot tall, and my unhelpful brain immediately provided an image of a belligerent garden gnome who had appeared in a 'Times' cartoon the other week. 'Mr. Terribilis Garden-Gnome' was their nickname for the pompous Conservative politician Mr. Theophilus Gordon-Holme, since both were short, useless and at best an acquired taste.

“I am, sir”, I said, already annoyed by his tone. “I am about to dine but....”

“I want you to find my son, Demetrius”, he said. “He went missing last year. My card.”

To my astonishment he placed his card on the nearby table and walked off. I stared after him for a moment, then remembered. Bacon.

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I had not the least intention of exerting myself for whoever this rude fellow had been, but I had an evening to kill (an unfortunate choice of phrasing as things turned out) so decided to make some desultory inquiries before leaving on the morrow as planned. I asked Tim, one of the bell-boys, if he knew anything about the fellow who had accosted me earlier. He was new and did not but he suggested Dirk who worked the door and had been there for 'donkeys' years'. 

The doorman was a large and beefy fellow of about thirty-five years of age, and he was friendly enough.

“Mr. Everard Street”, he said at once. “Yes, his son Demetrius disappeared almost exactly a year ago. No great loss.”

“Did you know of him then?” I asked.

“Who didn't round here?” he said. “He was known as 'Misery Street' because he enjoyed making everyone's lives a misery. If you're looking to find people who wanted him dead round these parts sir, you'd better rebook for a year!”

 _That bad_ , I thought.

“I have no intention of delaying my departure for the missing fellow's terrible father”, I said, “especially the way in which he spoke to me earlier. But I may ask around a little this evening, just to satisfy my own curiosity.”

I was sure that he did not hesitate before answering, yet there was something ever so slightly off in his tone when he spoke.

“You might try either Miss Curlow or Mr. Smith, then”, he said. “They live not far from here but in opposite directions. She has a small place by the bridge in Tulloch Street; go down the High Street then take a right opposite the ironmonger's. He owns the taxidermy shop in Hill Street; take the right past the butcher’s and it's a little way down on the left. Young Misery thought she was a witch, and Mr. Smith is just weird!”

I looked at him curiously.

“You say it as if the young man is dead”, I observed. “Why?”

“Just a feeling, sir”, he said with an easy smile. “Like you, my job involves a lot of looking at people and drawing my own conclusions. Hope I'm wrong, but I’m not usually. You might want to see Miss Curlow first.”

I wondered at that but thanked and tipped him, then went on my way.

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Miss Jane Curlow was, I had to admit, the sort of person that some people might indeed have thought to have been a witch. She even had a black cat, and if I had seen a cauldron and a tall pointy black hat I may well have fled the place! She said that she had not seen the vanished Mr. Street for quite some time as he had apparently found the taxidermist a 'better' target in the month or so before he had vanished. 

I left her and walked back towards that fellow's shop thinking that all I was getting out of it was a good walk, and that Dirk had been wrong to tell me to go to the lady first before because by the time I got to the shop.......

That was when it hit me, and my bacon very nearly made an unscheduled reappearance! No! I mean..... no! Lord above no!

Feeling not the littlest bit queasy I continued on my way to the taxidermist, although part of me wished very firmly to return to the hotel, to hide under the bed-covers in my room, to scream loudly into the pillows and to pretend that I had never started this infernal investigation. He could not have.... I mean, how could he have.... please God let me be wrong for once!

I reached the shop which was small and unremarkable. It was of course closed by this time of an evening but there was a light on in the house above so I knew that Mr. Smith was in. I had dealt with many criminals in my time, but even so I shuddered as I knocked on the door and waited.

Mr. Timothy Smith was much as I had expected, a small and unremarkable fellow of indeterminate middle age who I was sure the late Mr. Demetrius Street had had great enjoyment out of bullying. Right until.....

He looked at my card, then nodded.

“I heard that you were in town”, he said calmly. “Do you wish to see him?”

Lord alone knows why but I nodded. He led the way around to his study, unlocked the door and showed me in. There was a fair number of stuffed animals; relatively few wild ones I noted but a cat, a dog, several birds, a fox, a badger..... 

And in the corner a surprised looking gentleman of about twenty-five years of age, with his mouth open and caught raising his hand as if he had just been about to say something!

_My life had come to this?_

“Mr. Sherlock Holmes, meet Mr. Demetrius Street”, my host said, as if introducing visitors to people that one has stuffed was somehow perfectly normal. “Not a pretty specimen, is he?”

“You _stuffed_ him?” I said incredulously. I had thought that this could not be worse but suddenly I had the terrible image of this happening to the fellow while he had still been alive.

My host shook his head, went over to the figure and gestured to a small mark on his neck.

“He knew that I suffered from a weak heart”, he explained. “One day he broke in here and hid behind the door thinking to surprise me, possibly even to scare me to death. He was stood on a chair – that one over there – and leaped down with his knife in front of me. Unfortunately he slipped and the blade caught his neck.”

He crossed the room and lifted the rug, whose presence I had thought a little out of place for this room. Sure enough there was a faint stain on the floor. Ugh! Double ugh!

“There was nothing that I could do”, he said simply. “Everyone knew he had been pestering me, so who would believe that it had been an accident? That was when I came up with the idea. He had been always on at me in life, and now he will be forever trying to have the last word to me. Yet never having it.”

I could not believe this!

“What about his father?” I asked. “Does he not deserve to know where his son's body is?”

“You have met him or you would not be here”, Mr. Smith said shortly. “He does not. I would have thought that you of all people would have approved, Mr. Holmes.”

I stared at him incredulously. Somewhere out there, there was a Mr. Sherlock Holmes to whom his world still made perfect sense. It was surely not this one.

 _“Why?”_ I managed at last. “What earthly power could have made you think that?”

“You follow justice before the law”, he said. “No crime has been committed here unless you count concealment of a corpse as one, and I would rank that against all the harm this villain did while he was alive. Now he has justice. Forever.”

I supposed that he had a point, but still.... ugh!

“Besides”, he went on with a smile that chilled me to the bone and horribly reminded me that hardly anyone knew where I was right now, “even if you did disapprove, _you_ can hardly report me to the authorities.”

“Why would I not?” I challenged.

“Because”, he said, a manic glint in his eyes that made me almost start to back away from him, “in the long time that it would take the wheels of justice to grind towards their end, I would make a point of writing to your mother and suggesting that she use this case for a whole _series_ of her stories!”

I shuddered. This man was evil personified!

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All right, maybe he was not that evil. But if he ever did give this as an idea to Mother, he would be the next one to end up getting stuffed!

Dirk gave me a knowing grin as I returned to the hotel.

“Pity you're not here tomorrow, sir” he said. “They do a great Sunday dinner you know – roast beef, roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding..... _stuffing!_

I glared at him. Snarky bastard!

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	22. Case 96: The Adventure Of The Displeased Duke ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1885\. After leaving Dingwall feeling unpleasantly stuffed (sorry!), Holmes looks up an old acquaintance only to find him having problems with his employer. Can he restore harmony, or is discord actually a good thing for once?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The name Aedh is pronounced 'eye-ith'.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

I could not get out of Dingwall fast enough after.... I mean, how could anyone do that to..... and the thought of my mother writing about..... Lord God no!

It was one of those rare times when sleeping powders were suddenly an essential!

I suppose that I was fortunate in one aspect (and given what I had just been through, I deserved that and more!) in that my next important port of call was Cromarty on the Black Isle. the peninsula between the Moray Firth to the south (which ran into Inverness) and the Cromarty Firth (which ran up to Dingwall) to the north. My original plan had been to double back and use the railway that ran along the southern side of the island to the town of Fortrose, then take a carriage to Cromarty, but this would have entailed coming back through this place…. just no! My lucky break was that Dirk (in between smirking far too much for someone who wanted a tip) informed me that there was a boat from Invergordon where the train north called that sailed to Cromarty. And since I planned to finish my Caledonian trip on the Shetland Isles, there was as I mentioned earlier a weekly boat back from there to Aberdeen so I need never see Dingwall again. Thank God!

Of course the Fates made sure that I did have to pass through – very quickly through – the town at least twice more during my career. And both times I stayed very firmly inside my carriage with the blinds down. I had had quite enough of Ross-shire’s county town, thank you very much!

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My reason for wishing to visit the small town of Cromarty stemmed from a previous case, 'The Adventure Of The Poison Pen'. As a result of my efforts back then the Dukedom of Cromartyshire and its estate had passed to Master Edmund MacGyver, then just fifteen year of age, and to the incredulity of his family Duke Malcolm had appointed as his guardian one of his many illegitimate sons, Mr. Brendon Drummond late of my stepbrother Campbell's molly-house empire. Incredulity had likely turned to jealousy when Brendon had made a very good job of things, and I knew that his charge was about twenty years of age, close to his majority and also engaged to be married. I was sure that from what the young duke had written to me that he would take care of the gentleman who had guided him through to adulthood, but I had also had a letter from my former molly-man friend that had made me… not so much uneasy and just wishing to make sure that things were still all right for him.

Because one does not normally drop on the houses of the great and the (sometimes) good without just cause, I paused in Invergordon and sent a message to the duke to see if he might receive me. I had provisionally secured myself a place at a hotel in the town but within an hour a reply came to say that Duke Edmund was sending his own launch over and it would meet me at the pier in half an hour, and that he insisted that I stay with him as long as I wished. I was touched; the young nobleman had only tangentially benefited from my helping his guardian but he clearly knew his manners.

Duke Edmund was a surprisingly fit and muscular young fellow for a twenty-year-old in these bucolic parts, I thought but did not say when we met. He obviously caught my surprise and smiled.

“Agnes – my fiancée – says that I put on weight far too easily”, he said, “so I run and have my own gymnasium here. She is far too good-looking for me and I was extremely fortunate both in that she accepted me and was able to convince her father, who still looks at me dubiously as 'a foreigner from south of the Glen'. Thank you so much for coming, sir, and thank you especially for Don. I do not know how I would have got through the past five years without him.”

“He did write to me and say how happy he was here”, I said. “It is certainly much better for him that the dirt and grime of London Town.”

“It is not just that”, the young duke said. “All that wealth might have gone to my head had he not laid down the law to me more than once. I did not like it much and we had some blazing rows, but I came to see how right he was. I am only hoping that he will stay on once I come of age next year.”

“Why would he not?” I asked.

The duke looked embarrassed for some reason.

“I am afraid that I asked you here under something of a false pretence, sir”, he admitted. “I have a problem with Don – and I do not know how to deal with it.”

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“Everything was fine up to this January past”, the duke said once coffee had been brought (he clearly appreciated the most important things in life). As I said, my prospective father-in-law is not overly enamoured of me but the important thing is that Agnes and I love each other. Even better, she likes Don; she let fly at her sister the other week when the woman tried to make something of his London past, which given what Edie's own husband is like.... pots and kettles, as they say.”

“Then what is the problem?” I asked.

“Agnes's twin brother Aedh is the problem”, he sighed. “He is one of those gentlemen who will always wants to control things, and although Agnes will not let him do anything as regards the weddings he is always telling me how I should run the estate better. Of course that annoys Don who, I am sure that even you will admit, can have a bit of a temper on him.”

That was true, I knew from Campbell. For all that he was so easy-going most of the time, when Brendon was dealing with those few customers who misused a fellow molly-man he really lost it, as said miscreants had found out the 'hard' way. My stepbrother had offered to go into more detail but I had reminded him that I knew several murderers who owed me favours, so he had restricted himself to an annoying smirk. Which had been bad enough!

“So you have endured nearly a year of their sniping at each other”, I said pityingly. He nodded glumly.

“They were at each other's looks the other day, would you believe?” he sighed. “For all that he is a wonderful fellow Don has few looks although his build is phenomenal; he has been the one training me into my current shape. Several of the ladies round here even tried to 'convert' him, as if they were changing his dessert preferences or something! Aedh is the opposite; good-looking in the mirror but he is something of a runt, although he boxes and is quite fit. He also does not like that Don is my trainer as well as my estate manager.”

I smiled at that, and a sudden squall of December rain against the window briefly drew my attention. The gardens of MacGyver Hall had been well laid out from what I had seen of them as I had walked up from the pier, and even in the iron frosts of December they looked pristine and well-ordered. Apart possibly from a rather strange Greek-style temple on the bay which looked somewhat out of place in the Scottish Highlands.

A _Greek_ -style temple. Hmm.

“I have an idea as to how you might stop their squabbling”, I said slowly. “But you would need to be slightly deceitful to make it work. If it does work....”

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It happened that I already knew something of this Mr. Aedh Campbell, the duke’s prospective brother-in-law. In his two letters to me this year that had been forwarded to me from London, Brendon had spoken of him in language that the General Post Office would definitely have disapproved of had they known about it. I had wondered at what was both said and unsaid, which had been one reason for my choosing to come here. The former molly-man was I knew a deeply emotional man despite his early choice of profession and although it took a lot to get under his skin, he tended as my stepbrother Campbell has told me to react fiercely when it did. That was why he was reserved for certain problem clients who required.....

_Why did even the relatives that I liked, or at least were a lot bigger than me, have this irritating tendency to overshare things?_

The following morning Miss Agnes Campbell came over with her brother. The duke had not understated his descriptions of either of them, she was quite beautiful and about the duke's age while he looked more a younger brother by some years than a twin. I would have admitted that he was as the duke had said facially handsome in a magazine-front sort of way, if physically something of a runt. Worst of all, he definitely looked down on my friend with the sort of look my stepbrother said many of his business's clients had on entering. Rarely on leaving, though!

As I said, oversharing! 

After some little time the duke turned to Brendon.

“I am not sure whether to have those houses in Jemimaville† repaired or replaced”, he said, frowning. “What do you think, Don?”

I caught Mr. Aedh Campbell's frown at the duke's use of the short form of my friend's name. Clearly such familiarity between a member of the upper class and a mere steward was Not On.

“Definitely repaired for now, sir”, Brendon said. “We have no spare housing in which to house the folks, so we can hardly turf them out while we tear down their houses to build them brand-new ones.”

“There is enough capacity to replace one building at a time”, Mr. Campbell put in. _“I_ have looked into it.”

Brendon's face darkened.

“Sorry, sir”, he said sharply. “I was under the impression that _I_ was your estate manager.”

“So you are, Don”, the duke said soothingly, and I caught his future brother-in-law's annoyance at his genial tone. “So you are. Is there no way to work round the people with them remaining _in situ?”_

“No sir”, Brendon said firmly.

“You have not even checked!” Mr. Campbell snarked.

“I am smart enough to already know”, Brendon said testily, glaring back at his adversary. “Unlike some people!”

“Are you calling me stupid?” Mr. Campbell demanded angrily.

It likely did not help matters when my friend very visibly pretended to think about that for far too long. Suddenly the duke banged his fist down on the table next to his chair.

“Right!” he yelled, to the visible surprise of Mr. Drummond and Mr. Campbell (and to a decent attempt at faking same from his future wife). “I have had enough of you two! Snipe snipe snipe, all day and every day; I cannot and will not have this with the marriage coming up. You will settle your differences once and for all, and like grown men!”

“I quire agree”, Miss Campbell said. “Aedh, you should know better.”

“If it were not for Agnes here I would be tempted to send you both away to fight a duel”, the duke said crossly. “But I have a better idea. You are both always having a go at each other's physical features, So you can decide things that way.”

Both men looked at him in bewilderment.

“How, sir?” Brendon asked.

“Don, take him to your place and use the mats in your own gymnasium”, the duke said. “The two of you can wrestle to see which of you is the stronger. I suppose there is always the chance of an injury but at least that might make the loser shut up for five minutes! The first one to take their opponent's knee to the mat twice is the winner, and I will do what that person advises for the next three months.”

I noted that both the gentlemen were eyeing each other up, and that each quite clearly thought that they would have the advantage. They both nodded, bowed to the duke and left.

“Do you think that it will work?” the duke asked once they had gone.

“One can but hope”, I said. “At the very least it will buy you both a few minutes peace and quiet!”

He and his future wife both laughed.

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It brought them rather more than just a few minutes, because there was no sign of either gentleman all that afternoon until dinner was announced.

“Should we send to ask if they wish to rejoin us?” Miss Campbell asked.

“Would _you_ care to go over there just now?” I asked slyly. She looked most alarmed.

“That is my twin brother!” she exclaimed. “Definitely no!”

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Miss Campbell had to return home and the duke walked her to her carriage, then returned to me.

“I so want to find out if it worked”, he admitted, “but.... I am not yet twenty-one. And I quite like being able to sleep at night!”

I saw his point.

“Would you like me to go and see?” I asked. 

He looked like I had promised him the Moon!

“You have no idea how much!”

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Brendon's cottage stood in the grounds of the hall, overlooking the bay. A keen observer might have wondered that with winter approaching there was no smoke coming from the chimney in December. I did not wonder but instead knocked at the door. 

Fifty-four seconds later Brendon opened it in just his dressing-gown. I had not known that he could blush like that.

“Oh”, he said. “Uh, hullo, sir. Did Miss Campbell wish for her brother to accompany her home?”

I just shook my head at him, and he blushed even more.

“It is almost dark, so Miss Campbell left quite some time ago”, I said. “I volunteered to come over and see who had won the great contest.”

He seemed to be finding the floor inordinately fascinating.

“We.... er, we sort of decided to call it a draw”, he muttered. “Eddie is not angry with me, is he? I forgot that I was to meet with him this evening.”

“Fortunately he expected you to have other things on hand”, I smiled. “I had better be headed back to the house. Goodbye, Brendon. Goodbye, Mr. Campbell.”

“Goodbye Mr...... damn and blast!”

Incredible. When that voice came from deep inside the house, I would have thought it impossible for my friend to have turned any redder. But somehow he managed it!

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_Notes:_   
_† The unusual name remembers Jemima Munro née Poyntz, wife of the laird Sir George Gun-Munro (1725-1785). The baronet also purchased nearby Ardoch and renamed it Poyntzfield, so Jemima had two places named in her honour!_

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	23. Interlude: Homeward Bound

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1886\. The start of a new year, and after a difficult 1885 things are looking up for Doctor John Hamish Watson. England beckons....

_[Narration by Doctor John Watson, M.D.]_

Good news. Although the Liberals had won the most seats at the general election at the end of the previous (and for me, somewhat eventful) year, the Conservatives had been able to remain in office thanks to support from Irish members. I was overjoyed!

All right, I am being sarcastic as I distrust those two bunches of crooks pretty much equally. As I had said more than once to Holmes, politicians were like a baby's nappy; they needed changing regularly and for pretty much the same reason! However the start of this year had brought an unexpected development which had boded well for my return to England. Ever since the death of the mad Mahdi the precious summer his new state had fallen into ever more bitter factional infighting, and one potential leader had decided that his own best path to power was to lead his fragment of an army into an invasion of Ethiopia (or Abyssinia), one of the very few independent countries left in Africa. The Ethiopians had for some strange reason taken umbrage at this, and the rebels had not only been repulsed but chased back into the Sudan and severely beaten. The chances of asserting British control over the area now looked much better even if the build-up of the necessary forces would take months, which meant that while my services were still welcome they were no longer actually needed. I could go home to England!

 _And my son_ , an unhelpful voice at the back of my brain put in. I ignored it.

 _And Holmes,_ I thought instead. Incredibly he was still on his Scottish tour; it could surely not be fear of his mother's dreadful stories that had kept him away from London for this long.....

_The heat was finally getting to me!_

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I had given my commanding officer the required official three months' notice so in April I would be away from this hot-house. I had also sent to Mrs. Hudson in Baker Street (Lord alone knew what she must think of me!) and to Holmes, who had immediately sent back that he would be in Baker Street to welcome me to our new home. That it had been three years since we had secured the place and the actions of both of us since.... no, the past was another country and best put firmly behind us.

Sigh. If only life could be that easy.

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	24. Case 97: The Adventure Of The Trained Killer ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1886\. In a southern land that is actually northern, Holmes tracks down the decidedly unusual Mr. Bronn Blackwater who is on the run and persuades him to give himself up. For a price....

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

This adventure was to introduce someone who was to make several further appearances in my own and Watson's lives, as his own life took the sort of twists and turns that my mother must never get to hear of because they might well have inspired her to write about them. That was something that should only happen when I was far, far away, or even better, had duped someone like Randall or Torver into being in the wrong place at the wrong time (which reminded me; I had to pay Carl when I got back to London for having arranged that last one for me in November).

I left Duke Edmund rolling his eyes at a steward suddenly turning up in a less than presentable state along with a future brother-in-law who was equally suddenly much less outspoken (having seen 'Foot-Long Finn' in all his glory, I could easily guess why!) and headed off to visit nearby Cromarty which I enjoyed before taking the boat back to Invergordon. From there I continued to my next stop, the village of Tain on the Dornoch Firth. I had planned to keep to the railway but I found a ferry that ran to Dornoch in Sutherland which would spare me a massive detour inland. Tain was however a pleasant enough place so I spent a few days there waiting for a calmer crossing as the seas were rough even for me.

Sutherland is of course the penultimate county heading north on the British mainland and I did not wish to do much in Caithness further on as I knew that was where one of the famous 'ends of Great Britain', John o' Groats in this case, was situated, and I also knew that Watson particularly wanted to go both there as well as to the other, Land's End down in Cornwall. Some day, when we were hunting together once more, we would do just that. Watson had written that he would definitely be home the following spring. I had thought of him even more during the festive season, especially his over-exuberant celebration of what was basically a hijacked pagan festival.

Some day soon.

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Dornoch was the first of four stops I planned to make in Sutherland – I remembered Watson telling me during The Adventure Of The Andover Asses which had tangentially involved the Duke of Sutherland about how the area’s name came about, namely as the 'southern lands of Norse-controlled north Britain' – and I enjoyed both it and Golspie before I reached the small town of Brora. As I rested in my hotel I wondered if there were any Viking descendants still in these parts, or if the intervening centuries had blended them all into the local populace. Tomorrow I would look around the place and see.

Brora’s setting was in some ways that of a seaside resort, although I was sure that the temperatures in these northern climes would have deterred all but the hardiest of bathers. Only an occasional Highland Railway train disturbed the general tranquillity as it chuffed along the coast either south of Inverness and…. Some stuffy place I did not wish to think about, or north to Thurso and Wick. The one thing that I did find odd was the large army barracks outside the town, so I asked the hotel owner Mr. Sharp about it.

“It is what they call survival training, sir”, he explained. “The hills and wilds around Sutherland are tough; they send the men out with minimal equipment to make them tougher.”

I supposed that that made good sense.

“Is that one of the barracks men over there?” I asked, gesturing to where a military-looking gentleman had just entered the hotel and was looking around. His fierce scowl was visible even at this distance. 

Mr. Sharp followed my look, then went pale.

“Captain Bligh!” he muttered. “Named for his distant cousin of Mutiny on the Bounty fame; incredibly this one is worse! I hope that he will not bother you, sir.”

That hope was I quickly realized a forlorn one, as the receptionist who spoke to the captain gestured in my direction and he turned on his heel to stride towards me. I was impressed that someone as rotund as Mr. Sharp could have effected such a swift getaway.

“Mr. Holmes!” the captain barked. “I have lost a man!”

His tone was both peremptory and annoying, and I was reminded of the unpleasant Americans back in Inveraray. This oaf seemed to think that excess volume in some way made up for lack of social graces.

“Any man?” I said dryly, unable to resist baiting him. “Or do you have someone specific that you have misplaced?”

He narrowed his eyes at me, which was a bad mistake on his part. Having grown up with my family I had quickly mastered a stare that could outdo any of them. 

“Blackwater”, he said, wiping his eyes. “His father signed him up but the young rogue cut and run when he heard that the old man had died. He cannot have gone far in this wild area; I am sending the men out after him and I want you to help.”

He was almost shouting now, even though I was at a normal distance in front of him. Several people were taking an obvious interest in our conversation, and I noted one plainly-dressed young lady emerge from the dining-room and stop abruptly when she saw who was there. I noted her looking between us and wondered why.

“I very much doubt that I can be of assistance”, I said. “But I shall come to your barracks tomorrow morning and see what I can do. When do you start your search?”

“Sunrise”, he said. “I will see you then.”

He strode off, and I sighed at yet another rude client. A bad thought about the captain and a certain shop-owner back in Dingwall floated into my mind and very unfairly refused to leave. If there was stuffing on the menu in this place.....

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I waited until the crowd of onlookers had dispersed then followed the lady who had been clearly looking at us both. She was about forty years of age and very clearly in some sort of domestic service, although she was excellently turned out. She was thankfully sat on her own, and even better there was a pot of coffee in front of her. This was more like it!

“Madam?” I asked politely.

She gestured for me to sit down. I did so.

“You are Mr. Sherlock Holmes”, she said. “My name is Miss Viola Palliser, and I was a maid at the house of the late Mr. Baron Blackwater, father – by title though not by merit – of the fellow that that blackguard is looking for. Bronn.”

I took a seat and poured myself a coffee.

“You call him by his first name”, I observed. “Were you close?”

She seemed to hesitate over that for some reason.

“Bronn is not the sort to let anyone get close to him”, she said. “His father was, I am sorry to say, a bad man. His mother had died when he was young and his father – he himself had tried and failed to get into the Army so he determined that he would succeed through his son. The sad thing was that Bronn might well have made a good soldier – he has the character for it – but being pushed into it by his father made him push back.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“He ran away”, she said. “You see, his father had sent him to the Far East for about five years where he lived with an uncle or cousin; I know not which. While he was away his father signed him up for the army and arranged that he would start immediately on his return. He marched him off the boat and straight to the barracks; I saw Bronn's face when I was sent with news of his father's passing – that happened only about three months on - and I was not the least bit surprised when I heard of his flight.”

I looked at her curiously

“There is something more to this”, I said. “Is it Captain Bligh?”

Her reply caught me totally off guard.

“No”, she said. “Your brother Sherrinford.”

I stared at her.

“I received a telegram from him”, she said, “telling me to warn you before you went after Bronn. You see, he is….. dangerous.”

“Dangerous how, precisely?” I asked.

“As a lady I do not understand the details”, she said, “but some of the servants told me that while he was in the Far East he learned all sorts of strange ways of fighting. Some of them may well be deadly!”

I could see her point now, and I quietly thanked my twin for taking time away from..... his activities to warn me. This fellow might turn on me as well if I came across him. I thought of something else.

“When is sunrise here in January?” I asked. “I know that we are a long way north.”

“About ten o' clock”, she said. “Will you still help the captain find him?”

“Perhaps”, I said. “But maybe not in the way that he either expects – or wishes!”

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I was no soldier, but I had one advantage over my fellow hunters in that I knew people. So the following day I rose at an ungodly hour – thank the Lord that I could awaken early when needed; I was sure that I was never as bad as Watson sometimes said I was when there was no urgency – and set off into the town. I did not have far to go, and I soon came to the house of Miss Palliser, who had thankfully left me her details. Inside there was definitely movement, and a large shadow at one of the upstairs windows that could not possibly be the house-owner.

I knocked at the door and stood well back, so that the large figure could clearly see me. There was the slightest twitch of a curtain then what seemed like an interminable wait until the door was opened. It was Miss Palliser.

“Mr. Holmes?” she asked, pulling her thick dressing-gown tightly around her.

“I believe that you have someone here whom I have been tasked with looking for”, I said politely. “May I speak with him, please?”

She hesitated, clearly wondering if I might go away if she denied me, but then a tall figure emerged from behind her. Definitely a man.

“Get in!” he said curtly.

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Mr. Bronn Blackwater was a strange gentleman to have to describe. He was unkempt and looked far more than his nineteen years, his untidy blond hair framing a scarred and battered face that a broken nose did little for. Yet there was a cold intelligence in those sea-blue eyes that told me rather more, and I knew instinctively that if this fellow took it into his head that I was a danger to him, then even I would be lucky to get out of here alive.

“That rat Bligh asked you to look for me”, he said accusingly. “You said yes!”

“I said that I would be helping to find you”, I corrected. “I did not say that I would hand you over to him once I had found you, although given his character he quite possibly assumed that. I can hardly be held responsible for that, can I?”

He looked at me uncertainly.

“What do you want with me?” he demanded.

Miss Palliser coughed pointedly in his direction, and he reddened.

“The facts”, I said. “Is what Miss Palliser said about your Oriental skills correct?”

He nodded.

“I can stun a man four ways and kill him in three”, he said.

“Bronn!” Miss Palliser barked. “You will do no such thing in this house!”

He flinched at her tone. I smiled at them both.

“Perhaps Mr. Blackwater might be allowed to use _some_ of his talents?” I suggested.

They both looked at me in confusion.

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I first sent off a telegram to Father – he had some useful contacts at times – and then sent a note to Captain Bligh that an injury prevented me from joining his hunt for now. He would not be happy but he would soon have more than enough other problems on his hands. Mr. Blackwater would see to that.

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Three days passed before I got my reply, but fortunately it was a positive one and even better, a Colonel Theobald Lumsden based in Fort George not far from Inverness was on his way to see me. I arranged to meet him and Captain Bligh in a room that the hotel had very generously put aside for me.

The Captain arrived looking much as frazzled as I had expected (yes, _and_ hoped), and was clearly surprised to see a superior officer there. Although perhaps not as surprised as he was to see the other gentleman present.

“Blackwater!” he barked. “I have you at last!”

“I think not”, I said coldly. “Captain, how are your men?”

He looked at me as if I were quite mad, then at the private. I could see the thought struggling to make its way round his tiny brain and avoid dying of loneliness while so doing, but it got there in the end.

“What do you mean, Mr. Holmes?” the colonel asked. He was a bluff gentleman in his late forties, clearly someone who liked the good things in life but honest-looking. I smiled at him.

“Over the past three days during which Captain Bligh's men have been searching for Mr. Blackwater here, they have been... I believe the colloquialism is 'dropping like flies'. You see, Mr. Blackwater has picked up some amazing skills in his travels, and is capable of quite literally stopping a whole regiment by taking out the men one at a time. His range is impressive, and he made sure that all your men were only out for half an hour, captain.”

The captain spluttered at that but the colonel looked thoughtful. As I had known he would.

“Can these skills be taught to ordinary men?” he asked.

“I could do that”, Mr. Blackwater said with a smile. “Including the ones to kill.”

The colonel took a deep breath.

“I am almost afraid to ask”, he said, “but how long does it take to kill a man?”

“My most efficient method is three seconds from contact.”

Even the belligerent captain shuffled back in his chair at that. As well he might; Mr. Blackwater was looking at him rather too consideringly. I should probably have said something but for some reason I did not feel inclined so to do. Not by a long chalk!

“I rather think that the regular army is not for you, sir”, the colonel said, and I saw that he too was keeping a safe distance between himself and Mr. Blackwater. “Would you be prepared to move to our main Highland base near Fraserburgh, in Aberdeenshire? That works much like the barracks here but covers all skills, not just survival training.”

“That would suit me well, sir”, Mr. Blackwater said. “My late father's estate includes a small property on the coast near that town, so I could live there. I am sure that I would get on well with the men. I do with.... _most people.”_

He gave Captain Bligh an even darker look. If the fellow moved his chair back any further he would be out of the door!

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Postscriptum: It worked out very well for young Mr. Blackwater who did indeed move to Aberdeenshire to spread his deadly skills among our brave men. He had many happy years there until a chance visit to see Miss Palliser who had since moved to Inverness ended somewhat unexpectedly....

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	25. Case 98: The Adventure Of The Harray Pottery ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1886\. An Orcadian adventure as the great detective leaves the British mainland for a while. But although he is about as far away from his family as he can get while still in the British Isles, he runs into the work of his unpleasant brother Randall for whom 'little people' are just an inconvenience to be brushed aside without so much as a care.  
> Step forward one little brother to defend said 'little people'.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

Before we left Brora in different directions, Mr. Blackwater (he had told me that he had been supposed to have been called Byron but the priest at his christening had misread his name) very kindly taught me some of his special techniques 'just in case'. After all, there was Mycroft, Torver, Randall, Guilford.... and accidents _could_ happen.

'Someone' remained a bad influence on me – and I really looked forward to having that influence back in my life once more! 

I had continued north to visit Helmsdale, my last stop in Sutherland, where the line turned inland before reaching Caithness, and eventually changed at Georgemas Junction to reach the town of Thurso. I could of course have then continued along the coast to the famous John o' Groats, one of the 'official' ends of Great Britain', but I was not much of a tourist and as I said before, I was sure that we would have a case some day that would enable me to get Watson here as he had spoken before of his wish to see that and Land's End (we would, in both cases).

It was while I was in Thurso that I received a letter from Miss Clementine St. Leger, which would have a bearing on my next case. She told me that she had become aware that my unpleasant lounge-lizard of a brother was ‘up to something’ and she was working to find out just what, but that she already knew it involved my next destination, the Orkney Islands, as he had been trying to find out if I was in the area yet. She had made sure that he believed I had headed west towards the Western Isles instead, and would be in contact once she had more (which knowing her would be quite soon!).

For those who do not know the area, Great Britain has two groups of islands off its northern coast. The Orkney Islands start about ten miles off the coast, consisting of some seventy or so islands of which by far the largest, oddly called 'Mainland', is about two hundred square miles in area. Fifty miles to the north lie the Shetland Islands, a hundred or so islands with the largest again being 'Mainland' a little way short of four hundred square miles in area. Both island groups have a population of around thirty thousand†. I wished to visit both, partly for curiosity and partly because I knew that Watson with his hatred for choppy sea-crossings would not wish to unless by some mischance we ever had a case here (we would not, but we would come to Orkney many years later for other reasons).

The capital of Orkney was the small and pleasant town of Kirkwall on the north coast of Mainland, and I was at once struck by how Nordic rather than Scottish the islands were. They were I had read latecomers to the northern kingdom, having been annexed in the fifteenth century (only four centuries ago!) but their geographical isolation meant that they very much did their own thing and had as little to do with distant London as possible.

I did wonder; what could my unpleasant brother Randall, who hated going anywhere beyond the fringes of London, find of interest in somewhere as faraway as this place?

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It was now February so this far north the days were short while the night skies were so dark that the stars seemed absurdly bright. There was a freshness about the islands that was very welcoming and I enjoyed just walking around and taking the occasional boat out to other islands, finding nearby Shapinsay particularly to my liking. Today (1936) of course the great natural harbour created by Mainland and its nearby islands, Scapa Flow, is an important base for the Royal Navy. It became such because the unexpected start of the First World War (the governments of the time had only had at least a decade in which to prepare!) meant that plans for an expansion of Invergordon, whence I had crossed to Cromartyshire to see Mr. Drummond recently, had been still in their initial stages. Hence this distant outpost would become suddenly critical to the defence of our Nation.

The first day of my second week saw me debating whether to head down the western side of the Flow to the island of Hoy when I read something curious in the newspaper. Apparently someone had blown up a large barn in the middle of Mainland, near a place called Harray. There was no apparent motive for the attack and the manager of the pottery‡ who had rented the barn was 'flummoxed'. Possibly this was my brother’s doing, although it seemed totally motiveless which, despite his many, many, many, _many_ failings, was not like him.

I was about to look into this strange matter anyway when I received some useful information thanks to one of the local fisherman. Lars, who reminded me a little of Lowen from the Scilly Isles, was a helpful young fellow who had taken me over to both Shapinsay and Rousay, and had given me several useful pieces of advice on what I might look out for on the islands. He came to the hotel the morning after the article had appeared and asked to see me.

“Sorry to trouble you on your holiday, sir”, he said respectfully, “but my brother Mark is a soldier at the barracks outside town.”

I looked at him expectantly. He hesitated but continued.

“He and a friend of his went out for a drink last night”, he said. “His friend was acting a bit odd, and after a few pints he said that he and some of his fellows had been sent to blow up that barn in Harray. They weren’t given a reason but he said that the order had come from Them Upstairs.”

I immediately felt uneasy. This did indeed smell of my unpleasant brother Randall, who was always all too ready to do the government's dirty work for them. But why on earth would they want to blow up a potter's barn in the middle of the Orkney Islands?

“Thank you for telling me, Lars”, I said. “I think that I might look into this barn thing a little. You had better not tell anyone else about it though; you know how some people are.”

 _As in murderous_ , I added silently. He nodded.

“Nick – Mark's friend – was horrified this morning when he realized what he'd come out with”, he said. “I don't know sir, but it just feels off.”

I tipped him and again warned him against mentioning this to anyone else. If it was Randall, the young fellow himself might well be in danger. My brother was a morals-free zone when it came to his job. Or to life in general, for that matter.

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I wired immediately to Miss St. Leger in London with what I had learned, as I thought that it might help her with her own inquiries I doubted that it would take long for her to find the truth, and I also had a hunch that there would likely be another development in this matter sooner rather than later. 

Sure enough, the local newspaper the following morning had the news that the destruction of the Harray barn had been linked to a sighting of an Austro-Hungarian warship off the island's southern coast, and a party of sailors from it having been seen going ashore. I sighed at the predictability of some irritating brothers, who seemed to think that their actions would remain undetected because of their sheer magnificence. I could see that one day Randall and I would have a major falling-out, especially as he openly disliked Watson and thought that without him I would otherwise have been constantly at his beck and call. In his dreams!

I had no idea as to just how major that falling-out would eventually be. Or how nearly fatal for someone very close to me.

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Miss St. Leger replied to me three days later, and confirmed my suspicions. I sent back and suggested a course of action which, I knew, would greatly inconvenience someone known to us both. Sure enough, three days on from that a certain pestilential lounge-lizard duly arrived to the islands. I only wished that I could have been there when he had learned that my arrival on the island had coincided with his dark scheming but his annoyance now was pleasure enough, especially as I knew how much he hated leaving London. He could hardly have been any further away now!

“There had better be a good reason for me having to see you in this hole!” he grumbled as we stood on the quayside in Kirkwall. He had of course hired a special train (at the taxpayers' expense, Watson would have correctly snarked) all the way to Thurso then had a Royal Navy frigate pick him up and bring him here. Said ship was still in the harbour, clearly having been instructed to wait for him.

“I suppose that we could have conducted this exchange via telegraph”, I conceded. “But you have a bad habit of rudeness over the wires, Randall, and considering the circumstances I might well have been provoked into sending Mother a message and telling her about certain things. You are not in her good books after recent events, let alone what she will say when she finds out about you and Lord Frodsham's pregnant secretary....”

He was looking at me in shock.

“How could you know about _that?”_ he demanded angrily.

“Several hundred miles does not stop me from keeping tabs on sibling nuisances”, I said airily. “Tell me, why did you instruct a group of British soldiers to go and blow up a barn in the middle of Orkney?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about”, he said loftily.

I just looked at him.

“That was the Austrians”, he said. “They were seen.”

I shook my head at him.

“My sources tell me that no Austro-Hungarian warships have been in these waters of late”, I said silently marvelling at how efficient Miss St. Leger had been. “You damaged a perfectly good pottery business. Why?”

He shrugged his shoulders. Even in the open air of the harbour his cologne was overpowering.

“Government has its reasons”, he said dismissively.

“Such as the Phaeton Project?” I asked.

He stared at me, aghast.

“There is no way you could know about _that!”_ he almost yelled. “It is top secret!”

“Not for much longer if you persists in yelling about it on a busy Scottish quayside”, I smiled.

He glared at me, but he knew that I had him. Good.

“Some boffins think they can develop a rocket as an artillery weapon”, he said. “It could revolutionize warfare.”

I continued to look at him. His look was now murderous. I really hoped that he tried something; it would have been the perfect occasion to try out some of Mr. Blackwater's talents and I was sure that Mother would only have been Mildly Irritated (Level One) at the loss of this particular son. I would even have made a donation to the town council for polluting their harbour.

“I know all”, I said softly. “There is no such project, except on some papers in Whitehall. You set the whole thing up so that you could claim that the Austrians had sabotaged it having stolen the technology, which would then sow seeds of discord with their new allies in Berlin. I suppose you considered the ruination of an innocent Orcadian business a small price that you would not have to pay.”

I must have been slipping, because almost too late I foresaw his obvious reply.

“If you were thinking of any response involving the breaking of eggs and omelettes”, I said quickly, “remember that even big brothers can easily be wrestled into the dirty seawater currently just a few feet away from their designer shoes!”

He edged away from both me and the water's edge. His first wise move of the day. Probably of the year.

“What do you want?” he said sulkily. “Have I not suffered enough having to come all this way just because Mother wanted to know you were all right for some reason?”

I smiled innocently at him. He looked puzzled for a moment before he got it.

“You bastard!” he exclaimed. “You got Mother to send me to this hole!”

“I did tell Mother that”, I agreed. “I did not tell her about your deliberately ruining an innocent man's business. But unless you pay for the full repair and restoration of the Harray Pottery's barn and contents, then who knows what I will tell Mother!”

“Fine!” he snapped. “Can I go now?”

“Almost”, I said. “One more thing. Remember Randall, my eyes are _everywhere_. If you try to use taxpayers' money rather than your own, I shall know. _And so, soon after, will Mother!”_

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I can say that Randall did the sensible thing and paid for the Harray Pottery to be compensated out of his own pocket. Well, I can say that but it would be a lie; he tried to use government funds but before it could go through some horrible person related the whole incident to Mother and, in a fit of inspiration, she made a story out of it named after the supposed Austro-Hungarian commander involved, a sexually overcharged Lothario called 'Seinfeld', and then she invited (Commanded) Randall to come round to hear it. Then she took the cost of the repairs out of his bank account (adding twenty-five per cent for the delay) and sent it to the pottery,.

I stopped laughing _eventually!_

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_Notes:_   
_† The subsequent population histories of the island groups are oddly similar. Both were then near their peak population and beginning what would be a decline of nearly a century, being down to about 17,000 each in the 1970s. However thanks partly to North Sea Oil there was a recovery, and the latest figures put the Orkney Islands at 22,000 and the Shetland Islands at 23,000._   
_‡ The business in this story is as of 2020 a real one in Harray on the mainland of Orkney. I have been there and purchased my own Harray Pottery!_

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	26. Case 99: A Case In Whiteness ☼

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1886\. Some things in life are totally predictable. The sun rising in the east, politicians being incompetent, lying fraudsters, so-called journalists ‘stretching’ the truth for their headlines – and evil elder brothers bent on revenge for being dragged all the way to the far end of the British Isles in the middle of winter. Holmes does a 'professional' job of dealing with the pestilential Randall.

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

I would not have survived this long with my family had I not foreseen that my annoying brother Randall, especially after he had been made to travel all the way across Great Britain to see me and had then had to suffer one of Mother's stories, would be out for revenge. So I made sure that he had an immediate opportunity – _to shoot himself squarely in the foot!_

I left Orkney at the end of February and headed still further north, to the last British outpost of Shetland. It was now little over a month until Watson's return and there was a weekly boat that connected from Bergen in Norway through Lerwick, the capital and chief port of Shetland, then via Kirkwall to Aberdeen (mercifully avoiding Dingwall and its 'stuffy' memories, ugh!). Best of all and despite my not particularly liking The Granite City, just one train would take me all the way back to London and Baker Street. Also my family, but one could not have everything.

On arriving in Lerwick I immediately scanned the local newspapers for something that I could get my teeth into. There seemed little happening in these distant islands but eventually I found what I wanted; Shetland was the home of Mr. George Cowley, a former government operative whose sudden and unexpectedly early retirement to these his native islands had been one of the many things that Randall had pestered me to look into. I had refused as it had been just days after I had lost Watson; my pest of a brother had been fortunate that I had not shot at him in my exasperation. 

Sigh. My life was full of missed opportunities like that.

As this had not seemed the normal sort of thing to have attracted my brother's attention I had been suspicious, so I had asked Miss St. Leger to look into the matter for me. She had found that Mr. Cowley had run a small government department which, like Randall's, specialized in covert (i.e. illegal) operations, and that it had been decided to fold it into my brother's own department. That had led Mr. Cowley to quit, a decision in which I could empathize; I could not see myself working with the lounge-lizard on a regular basis without committing fratricide, which I suppose would have been a bad thing. For some reason or other. Possibly.

Miss St. Leger had also told me that while Randall had accepted Mr. Cowley's retirement with his usual bad grace, he had been less than pleased that the two gentlemen who had worked under him, Mr. Raymond Doyle and Mr. William Bodie, had also quit, Mr. Doyle to join the Oxfordshire Constabulary and Mr. Bodie to become a soldier in the army. I thought about that for some little time before sending back to the lady and asking her for certain additional information. I then arranged that once I had certain things in place then certain _dis_ information would be slipped to Randall anonymously. Finally and most importantly I arranged for an extra delivery of those biscuits that she had adored from that shop in Nairn to be sent down to her; she had placed a standing order with the place as she had loved them so. It was good to make people happy.

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Five days after my own arrival on the islands, Lerwick ‘welcomed’ someone who was arguably better known than me at the time. Mr. George Easton was the 'Times' journalist who had broken the Red Box Scandal, when it had been revealed that government red boxes had been used for the carrying of not so much official documents but more for, ahem, sexual _accoutrements._ Several middle-ranking ministers had been forced to resign and Mr. Easton had made his name; I had wondered at the time why he and Randall had not crossed swords but had not been surprised to find that my unpleasant brother had decided to use the journalist for his own ends. Birds of a feather, as they say, especially as the two were not dissimilar in appearance; Mr. Easton had reportedly celebrated his success with some very expensive champagne which was a very Randall thing to have done.

The following day I hired a carriage and set out for the village of Whiteness, which lies about ten miles west of Lerwick on the west coast of Mainland. There was no way that I could have been followed as the open countryside made it impossible, but I was sure that Mr. Easton would be endeavouring to find out just where I had gone especially as I had told several people that I had a matter on hand. I had not said exactly where in these scattered islands but fortunately – or perhaps unfortunately for him – said information would be easily available.

I drew up outside a small house that overlooked a long inlet and knocked at the door. I was admitted by the three gentleman I had been expecting and we all went in for coffee, being sure to use the room whose windows commanded an excellent view of the road in both directions. I had wondered if Mr. Easton might chance riding around until he saw my carriage but he had evidently decided to try other methods first. All well and good.

I returned to my hotel and did not forget to tip my driver, John, who I knew had an important job. Then it was off to dinner, where thankfully they served bacon. I quite liked the Shetland Isles.

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The following day John came to me and told me that he had indeed been spoken to. I tipped him again and reiterated my promise of a large sum once this was all done; it was fortunate that Watson had always portrayed that side of me in the stories he wrote so that people trusted me. Then I decided to spend the day taking an excursion to Unst, the northernmost inhabited island in this group. There was little there of note but at least I could say that I had stood overlooking Out Stack†, the northernmost point of the British Isles. I had not actually seen anything because of the fog, but I had been there and I knew that because of the sea-travel involved in getting all this way – four boat journeys in a day! - Watson would have hated it.

I returned to Lerwick and managed to find a postcard of the Stack which I immediately dispatched to Watson; thankfully the postal service should just about get it to him before he left for England. Then I returned to the hotel where the helpful receptionist told me that Mr. Easton had been out, returned, and had dispatched a letter and several long telegrams to London. I smiled, thanked her, silently hoped that her eye problem would clear up and left.

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Impressively the 'Times' had the story out that evening and a copy of the newspaper reached the islands the next day. Mr. George Cowley, thought to have simply retired three years ago, had been living in one half of a house in a Shetland village while the other half had housed his two former employees Mr. Bodie and Mr. Doyle who with their former superior’s help had faked their departures from the government so that they could live together – _and that the two young men had been lovers!_ Worst of all, Mr. Easton opined, they had been quite shameless about it and had even tried to cajole the journalist into joining them in a threesome! He had fled the islands in order to bring this startling news of gubernatorial malfeasance to the people of Great Britain and the world. 

I received a telegram from Miss St. Leger, telling me that Mr. Easton had as I had expected visited the offices of a certain government functionary in London whence he had emerged smiling and with bulging pockets. I grinned when I read that; neither he nor Randall would be smiling for much longer.

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The storm broke down in London the very next day and Luke telegraphed me the news immediately. It turned out that Private Bodie had been in his barracks near Stirling for the past week while Sergeant Doyle had been attending an official police function in Oxford – both on the very day that Mr. George Easton had claimed to have seen them in Shetland, and both with dozens of witnesses. And one of the other London newspapers had 'somehow' found that it was a Mr. Randall Holmes who had conspired to have the whole story made public. Oops!

Mr. George Easton was sacked that same day. It may just be that a copy of this other newspaper was passed to Mother by someone (Luke) in which she found that one of her sons had sent a journalist to track down her youngest boy. There then resulted a Level Six, in which a certain parent was Seriously Displeased. Still, Randall was out of hospital in barely two weeks which was good by Level Six standards. At my suggestion she visited him every day so that she could read her stories to him. As I told her in my telegram, he would doubtless be crying tears of joy at this demonstration of such unmerited forgiveness!

I was sure that I had the 'tears' bit right!

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A few days later I again journeyed to Whiteness where I met Mr. Cowley, who I had made sure had had an alibi of his own by staying with his brother and the latter's family in Lerwick during the week of Mr. Easton's fateful visit. Mr. Cowley and his two former colleagues were, with my financial help, now all suing Mr. Easton for libel. The villain would be ruined, deservedly so for aiding and abetting my excrescence of a brother.

“I cannot believe anyone would think that of Bodie and Doyle”, Mr., Cowley said. “Both happily married men with families, as well. How did you manage it, may I ask sir?”

“I arranged for three actors resembling you and your friends to be in his cottage during your absence”, I said, “each of them resembling one of you. Then I arranged for my unpleasant brother's journalist friend to be handed a tip-off that Mr. Bodie and Mr. Doyle had paid two gentlemen to assume their identities so that they could decamp here for a life of sin and debauchery.”

Mr. Cowley looked surprised.

“He believed that?” he asked dubiously.

“As I am sure you remember from your work”, I said, “half the battle is telling someone something that they actually _want_ to believe. Mr. Easton was already working for my brother Randall so knew of his dislike for my not jumping every time he said ‘jump!’; he therefore saw that my apparent involvement in this ‘cover-up’ would yield him a rich reward. He was right, if briefly. I am afraid that my brother is the ultimate 'man-child' at times; he cannot believe that he will not get what he wants just because he wants it. The temptation to gain revenge on me was too great, but he instead crossed our mother. Never a wise move.”

Mr. Cowley winced.

“That was the only time I ever saw either of my boys have an emotion”, he said with a shudder. “They read your mother's story about a police sting operation called 'The Crossroads Motel'; the one with the hypnotist who made the two policeman coming after him do unmentionable things to each other, Believe me when I say that grown men _do_ cry!”

I uttered up a silent prayer that that was one horror I had thus far avoided. I said goodbye to Mr. Cowley then returned to Lerwick leaving him to his peaceful retreat. That was all he wanted after all, and once more he had it.

I just wanted my Watson.

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Postscriptum: Contrary to my expectations Mr. Easton was stupid enough to try something, although as I always assume the worst – I blame Watson for that, by the way – I had covered that eventuality. The villain had presumably gathered some blackmail material on his bosses at his newspaper for he received a substantial pay-off and used some of that to return to Shetland to try to check on Mr. Cowley. However I had John and some of his friends waiting and they met the journalist by the harbour in Lerwick. Into which they then threw him. Repeatedly.

After the fifth time he (finally) got the 'hint.' And all that money came in useful as he ended up paying it and more to the three gentlemen whom he had slandered. Hah!

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_† Also called Ootsta; it and not nearby Muckle Flugga is actually the northernmost point of the British Isles. The Stack is on roughly the same latitudes as Seward, Alaska, the entrance to the Hudson Straits off Canada and Bergen, Norway._

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	27. Interlude: Reunited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1886\. What is nearly two thousand miles when it comes to, ahem, friendship?

_[Narration by Mr. Sherlock Holmes, Esquire]_

Watson was due back at just after two o’ clock on the sixteenth of April, so I left Lerwick at the end of March and endured an uncomfortably long crossing via Kirkwall to Aberdeen (although as I said, it was still far better than having to go back through Dingwall!). The Granite City did not improve on further acquaintance and I had half a day there before the Night Sleeper would start for London. But soon I was back, and Watson had sent to say that he too was now on his way, having received my card of Out Stack on the very day of his departure. Unfortunately he had to cross the length of the Mediterranean Sea and, worse for his poor stomach, the turbulent Bay of Biscay. I hoped that he had laid in plenty of stomach powders!

Mrs. Hudson welcomed me back to Baker Street; it always puzzled me that she dressed more than her age considering that I was but a year younger than her, but she had a pistol and cooked me bacon while I had a strong desire to live, so I did not ask. Instead I arranged my side of the main room and my own bedroom, glad to settle back into London life.

There was of course the inevitable downside. I had to go round to my mother, although most fortunately I knew that she did not have any stories to inflict on anyone; Miss St. Leger had told me that Randall had had to endure the last one while in hospital which had made for an amusing picture as he would have been unable to run away. She also observed that 'someone' had suggested Mother reading to him throughout his whole recuperation process. I was sure that at least the hospital was grateful; my mother’s stories doubtless made my brother quit their bed in record time!

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On the great day itself I was a bag of nerves. Finally I saw the cab pull up outside 221B and I watched as Watson got out. I knew that he had sustained a mild leg wound a month or so back when a gun had gone off unexpectedly, but even so the slight limp worried me although he had told me that it would heal. Then it was the interminable wait for him to mount the stairs, come through the door and....

I stared in horror! My friend was a fraction of the man who had left three years ago. Gone was the solid 'rugby-build' as he had called it; now he looked if not starving then even thinner than I did (he had once declared himself confounded that while my weight was exactly what it should have been for my height, I still looked like a hat-stand). I wanted my old Watson back!

I really should have just shaken his hand and said how glad I was to be able to welcome him home, but for some reason this devolved into my rushing over and embracing him, causing him to drop his bag and gasp in shock as I wrapped myself around him (there may also have been some noise that an uncharitable person might have described as keening). He was clearly a little surprised at my overly effusive welcome but I cared not; I had been stupid enough to let this man go and I would not make that mistake a second time.

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Alas! I would.

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